I am alone with the shadows of my room.
The darkness gets nearer
each time I look at it, as if
it were the lid of my eyes. When I sleep
the night moves over my face
The mountains may teach their stillness.
In Orange County, in the first
orange grove, they have preserved
one tree in the asphalt
My children, far away and sleeping
in your city of looped water
where we walked in quiet places
the mind lived, how to speak to you
of this sound on the earth,
and this dark that comes close
I must speak of,
how begin to be still