After so much darkness
—for my father
After so much darkness, the field’s excess of light,
the day floating on itself as in a dream.
But it isn’t a dream, the small wound songs of the house finch,
the sun hammering the grasses’ bronze tips.
We had gathered about your bed
like a boat we tried to push off stony ground.
We wanted to help: we believed in the buoyancy of that water.
You held onto the ruins instead of our hands.
What did we know of how it is to look back at one’s life?
A bee swings from the nightshade.
Ants carry their burden up the post of the shed unmoved by song.
And the balm of the wind: from the woods the singing of leaves.
Or is it the sound of water flowing?
