After crying, Child,
there’s still singing to be done.
Your voice, the size of the heart’s
first abandonment,
is for naming
the span each falling thing endures,
and then for sounding
a country under speech, dark hillsides
of an older patience outwaiting
what you or your mother and father
could ever say.
What does day proclaim there
where birds glean all of our
remaindered sleep? After wings
and the shadows of wings, there’s still
the whole ungrasped body
of flying to uncover.
After standing, outnumbered, under petals
and their traceless falling
out of yesterday
into open want,
we’re still the fruit to meet,
still the ancient shapes
of jars and bowls to weigh,
and still the empty hands
in which the hours never pool.