Little Round

My fool asks: Do the years spell a path to later

be remembered? Who’s there to read them back?

My death says: One bird knows the hour and suffers

to house its millstone-weight as song.

My night watchman lies down

in a room by the sea

and hears the water telling,

out of a thousand mouths,

the story behind his mother’s sleeping face.

My eternity shrugs and yawns:

Let the stars knit and fold

inside their numbered rooms. When night asks

who I am I answer, Your own, and am not lonely.

My loneliness, my sleepless darling

reminds herself

the fruit that falls increases

at the speed of the body rising to meet it.

And my child? He sleeps and sleeps.

And my mother? She divides

the rice, today’s portion from tomorrow’s,

tomorrow’s from ever after.

And my father. He faces me and rows

toward what he can’t see.

And my God.

What have I done with my God?