Come now, rain, close the eyes of the diminutive philosophers
Which are always open—foraging, inquiring, remembering
(The cruelest of them all). Ten thousand turkey chicks
Huddled in like barberries shook down from their twigs
After a great storm in the big gray barn. Those that could still
Stand were struggling to come closer to the tin-red heat lamp
That is Mother to us all.
Warm (she is), long gone.
The fixed gaze of a barn owl,
Or Copernicus, thinking in his age,
Of a kind of brooding between the fixed stars and real life.
I wash the same slice of pear over and over again, the homeliest,
Most mottled one which tastes more tart.
Clip-winged, unbeaked,
Take refuge by the heat, the scald of thought, made most magical
For those, in dark, who find their own way by the light of others’ eyes.