His Grace Asleep and Waking
         

          — Despite having been raised mostly to cause
no sorrow, and when sorrow turned up, to look
quietly away, how much in this short gift of time
I've destroyed — without trying, almost. There's a
getting lost that is so much like starlessness when it
happens, you have to remind yourself of everything else
that being lost is also like, or you'll never get home.
In the end, courage has mattered so much less than
not spooking easily, which is all nerve is. Blind, that's
how the meadow wants me, I give myself blindly
up to it. I don't care about rumor, about the meadow
being not a meadow, but a field of death: when I say
Stop, I'm at once — green-blond, obedient, blade
by blade — released, why should death release me —

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Copyright © 2016 Carl Phillips All rights reserved
from Green Mountains Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission