Some days the song of the small enclosure
takes you a little farther, deeper, less
by way of what it says, than how it shudders,
how it lends a body to the chaos,
a mirror to the air, blood to the hands
we lace in thought, as if to reconcile
a grief with what we cannot understand.
Some days a whisper shakes the heart’s cathedral.
Not because our prayer is large. More
because it feeds a silence that is larger.
Come closer, say the atoms of the echoes.
Be small. Pull a chair to the fire,
to the pulse’s will to proceed, to listen,
to close our eyes and tear the darkness open.
is the author of thirty-seven books including, most recently, Invention of the Wilderness (LSU, 2023), Therapon (with Dan Beachy-Quick, Tupelo, 2024), Vault (Richard Snyder Award, Ashland, 2024), Lunette (Wishing Jewel Prize Editor’s Selection, Green Linden, 2024), and The Dove of the Morning News (Test Site Poetry Award, U of NV, 2024). Presently, he teaches part-time as a Regents Emeritus Professor of English at the University of North Texas and performs jazz and classical guitar in the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
