Listen
       

Is it an empty house, the body alone
with its weary old clothes
or its bullet holes and severed arteries,
last laugh still shining in its teeth?

The road of answers leaps its ditch
and descends a dusty hollow
where nightbirds coo, Pass by, and the Angel
of Nothingness does his nails.

Often sky dazzles
over the great breathing earth.
Often of its own accord the grain begins again
to simmer. Deep in the dark

I find my wife's hand and listen
as the blue trees bow and bend and I want my soul
to tell about itself almost
anything.

And it says I, too, am a traveler.
Wait for me.

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Copyright © 2012 Christopher Howell All rights reserved
from Gaze
Milkweed Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission