The Soul of Poetry

Please,

take me back

into the soul of poetry.

This is my prayer.

Geese fly overhead.

I hear,

I open the window to hear.

I open the door to see

countless, three long diagonal processions

one after the other.

Cold moves across my fingers.

The sun is low and red

through sparse sapling branches.

I step outside.

Birds sing into orange light.

Damp cold seeps into my feet—

Shhhh, shhhh, shhhhhhh,

a high wind rustles the tops of popples.

Their roots draw unseen below standing water.

I have nothing to say about these things

but to name them

this morning, home in the body

of poetry.