Gazing through the
night and its stars,
or the grass and its bugs,
I know in my heart these swarms
are the craft of surpassing wisdom.
Think: the skies
resemble a tent,
stretched taut by loops
and hooks;
and the moon with its stars,
a shepherdess,
on a meadow
grazing her flock;
and the crescent hull in the looser clouds
looks like a ship being tossed;
a whiter cloud, a girl
in her garden
tending her shrubs;
and the dew coming down is her sister
shaking water
from her hair onto the path;
as we
settle in our lives,
like beasts in their ample stalls—
fleeing our terror of death,
like a dove
its hawk in flight
though we’ll lie in the end like a plate,
hammered into dust and shards.
