First Sign

What divides

shadow from light

begins to soften. Notice

the shape of the shade

as the day contracts.

and how the blue hydrangeas

bunched beside

a pale brick wall

sink into the watery glare

of a lucid dream.

This is the first sign.

The new season

stealing along

the periphery.

And isn’t it a prayer,

to notice

what’s noticed?

The prayer,

the practice, the way

one walks through

an unimagined world.

Goodbye

To live in a place

Long enough to know

whole tonal ranges

of color and sound

between shrubbery

and asphalt.

In exile, the gaps

become companions—

how they relieve the senses

swarmed by traffic’s

shattered music.

Now, in summer’s rut,

I stand in a parking lot

under an overhang

and watch white threads of rain

evaporate the instant

they collapse into the ground.

And the heat makes a sound, eating rain.