In a Low Voice, Slowly
       

So stubborn, and as if almost necessary, this
              little wind, playing the leaves, their surfaces, playing
the leaves where they lie fallen, while not once
              rearranging them. Like being asked what, if anything,
do you regret at this point; and, as answer, shaping
              your own smallish song around how knowing isn't
understanding, isn't mystery either, which isn't un-knowing,
              not exactly, more like deciding to turn abruptly
east after so many years westering, what kind of answer
              was that? Sometimes the past seems the stuff of heraldry,
figures proper on a ground of good and evil. Other times
              the past sways ocean-like above me. There's a sound
deer still make when in sixes they come down
              from the hills at sunrise, the kind of sunrise where
no sun's visible, but it's daylight, and just the rain, and
              the deer passing like their own form of light through it;
their hooves mark the damp ground incidentally,
              no particular meaning. It's true that love marks the body.

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Copyright © 2020 Carl Phillips All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission