Spring sings in birds
as he walks between their songs.
A violet slips into being
under a rough rain,
but he is careful to step around
its purple emergence.
A month of suns rises
as he walks between the rivers
of false memory.
The day prays for him
and he sees a mother come
in a mist that harbors sunsets.
The birds deny his doubts
and build nests
to his illusion.
His stillness questions itself
in the waves of the river.
A father comes and goes
in these waves, and he hears
his surname
funeraled in ghosts of fog—
a syllable on empty lips.
His ear is tuned to absence
and the pelt of rain
as he recites the poetry
he cannot write except
with silent breath.
Such songs of birds redeem
heaven on this absent shore.
Perhaps he is wholly enough.
Perhaps he is profane enough.
Perhaps the distance he has come
is the profoundest of his faiths.
