The pull of guns I understand,
my father taught me hand on hand
how death is. Life asserts.
(Best take it like a man. )
I shot a dove, the common sort
and mourned not life but life so short
that gazed from death as if unhurt.
And I had nothing to report.
When the moon’ s worn scutcheon
touches the flint-gray flood,
I will lave him in foxglove
and vetch until the blood
of his wretched heart heals.
Without a scar, he stood —
as the men make their way
into the quaking wood.
I have seen the arrested
shrub inform the crag with grief.
Lichens crust the rocks with red.
Thorns punctuate the leaf.
Sorrow is not a desert
where one endures the other —
but footing lost and halting
step. And then another.
stand as clocks fully struck
in fields of fading flowers —
when the fires of summer come
they will gather up the hours
of rains past, frost endured
and famished stalks in full gale
that begin their telling once
all forms of telling fail
