The Sign
February 14th, 2006Save as PDF
Sometimes you have to work at paying attention to what’s happening around you– not to mention what’s happening inside you. And then there are those times when you experience something that releases a cascade of thoughts, associations and most of all, connections. That’s when a poem happens without half trying, like the poem below.
The Sign
As if a column of sacramental light
fell from a lancet in a darkened nave,
this shaft of sun
plunged down to city pavement.
In it twirled two mating insects, huge and gauzy.
They hovered spinning
till a gust propelled them eastward,
back to shadow.
Signs in heaven
insect flutters
voices in the traffic
cabalistic symbols on a license plate
dreams of foreign travel with a stranger
longings for just what I couldn’t say:
whispers strange and indistinct and intimate
from an inconceivable, comforting Creation.
And always,
always in these inadvertent moments
visceral conviction
that I should be paying
very close attention.
The light changes
the wind shifts
I step off the curb.
