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(Opening the window late at night...)




Opening the window late at night,
      there was a pretty wind out of the north
            and it made me sad,
a cold, clear wind blowing
      from vanished childish republics
            of trees moving in the night air,
promising unknowable futures,
      rivers, estuaries, seas, lands long gone by,
            seen from afar but now never to be known;

It was as if I had become an old-time English fart
      like Alfred Lord Tennyson,
            writing poems with long, loose lines about Nature,
but for me the words did not roll in
      like the gray sea
            of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto,
for just moments before I awoke I had been a girl with guns
      in the apocalyptic dystopia of my dreams,
            joyously burning cars in the country intersections
                    to hot choppy tunes,
and now — now I was an old guy looking
      for a place to write
            and a little circle of light,
while the trees shook their branches
      retreating into the medieval darkness
            until they became — just trees.

Until things came to be what they have to be.

There is some kind of nail that drives through things
      hammering them all together.

May this devotion be recognized by the Spirits.