To gaze at the enormous
yellow moon of summer,
to focus on a stone,
on lives that wax and wane,
on leaves that come undone
in drought or shine with rain,
the child’s fresh face, a magnet to the eye—
is this idolatry?
Between the glistening pelts of bathing children
and the knuckle-gnawing refusal
to look up from one’s book,
find out some middle way.
Fences. A weathered barn.
Are you getting warmer?
The milky grey expanse of sky implodes
on one more apparition:
no silo shimmering through celestial mist,
only more love for this
world’s pillars, banisters,
exit signs, arches, thresholds, winding stairs
struggled up, steep conundrum, toward a truth
hidden even as we breathe the thinner
air and feel the sun’s last kiss
blow hot on our closed faces.
