Ordinary Time

Days come and go:

this bird by minute, hour by leaf,

a calendar of loss.

I shift through woods, sifting

the air for August cadences

and walk beyond the boundaries I’ve kept

for months, past loose stone walls,

the fences breaking into sticks,

the poems always spilling into prose.

A low sweet meadow full of stars

beyond the margin

fills with big-boned, steaming mares.

The skies above are bruised like fruit,

their juices running,

black-veined marble of regret.

The road gusts sideways:

sassafras and rue.

A warbler warbles.

Did I wake the night through?

Walk through sleeping?

Shuffle for another way to mourn?

Dawn pinks up.

In sparking grass I find beginnings.

I was cradled here.

I gabbled and I spun.

And gradually the many men inside me

found their names,

acquired definition, points of view.

There was much to say,

not all of it untrue.

As the faithful seasons fell away,

I followed till my thoughts

inhabited a tree of thorns

that grew in muck of my own making.

Yet I was lifted and laid bare.

I hung there weakly: crossed, crossed-out.

At first I didn’t know

a voice inside me speaking low.

I stumbled in my way.

But now these hours that can’t be counted

find me fresh, this ordinary time

like kingdom come.

In clarity of dawn,

I fill my lungs, a summer-full of breaths.

The great field holds the wind, and sways.