Regeneration

"no one hears then as she goes on singing
of all the white days that were brought to us one
by one that turned to colors around us"

– Merwin, from "Prophecy"









We and the World Meet


Air that even here in the midwest lightens
as we gain altitude up an old and long quarry
trail that curves left and right among hickory
and maples and forms limestone hollows
that form spaces of all silence and knowledge

no one else today sees that it is these chambers
that recede inward that also bloom to light
above through the cracks in the rockbound birches

and an eye here sees what it needs of all things
how the soul found its name in the first place

always from where we and the world meet