I Walk from Steeple to Steeple

Regan Good

You diagram promises by your advancements

but leave bad things behind -- germy wing.

(World like a large drum beaten by soft things.)

I've spun unlike the lilies without proper goals,

toiled in wrong ways, it was the wrong difficulty

I sought.

Stunning the newborn things, all

these babies baking in their brains or playing

in the fronds in their throes --

The steeples were needle-like in their insistence

that the answer was always up, yet, with gusto

one walks the paved streets under the boiling sun --

(We live in the world with the bird and the whale.)

Despite the hemlock on the hill; despite the crow --

I watched the movement of the birds exact diligence

of no consequence but description,

heavenly description, of things fluted and feathered,

things flying liquid and high.

They cleave and cluster,

break then roll, corrosive mites infesting underwings,

their stained skin hidden from the whorl in my eye.

Behind my back -- the hooded rill of woods.

(Sun gavels the clouds; rain pounds the underdrum.)

Birds are the lilies. The will is the sickle. Birdsong

over the Willsong, one whistles loudly on the bluestone,

especially through long rains, though most hotly in the sun.

One wears it as a crown -- the sun and its wreathing song.

(We are as in a big drum, cold, pale spring, the increments of an underwing.)

Above, birds flying in circles and common-seeming serpentines.