Small Portends






Small Portends: 
                                          

It seems as if
This might be what forever is, the presence of time
Overriding the body of time, the fullness of time
Not a moment but a being, watchful and unguarded,
Unguarded and gravely watched in this garden—
                                               
                                                                                Brigit Pegeen Kelly
                                                                                Brightness From the North

Three days on a moth

knocks on the wire
mesh of the window
screen – she floats
up into the night only
to drift down again

come in from her dark
to this small square of two
a.m. light and, for June
an unseasonable chill.
I’m glad you don’t know

the owl who hoots a short
ways off in the south
east some mornings.  Would
she, if you lit somehow
close to her beak, see you

in the dark against the trunk,
the wrinkled bark rough
against you and would
she wisely lean in to open
her hooked advice to

soothe your recovering?
And would you go in out
of the cold while the dust
from your broke-away
wings floated to the floor

of the woods?  Your body
at last warm? Or would she
not even acknowledge you
were there and take the night in
stride without you, ruffing

herself over the same way
you do, from the foot
on up, shaking off what’s
settled on you before flying

toward small insignificant lights.

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