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 spun1 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 fronds2 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 hemlock3 on the hill; despite the crow --
I watched the movement of the birds exact diligence
of no consequence but description,
heavenly description, of things fluted4 and feathered,
things flying liquid and high.
They cleave5 and cluster,
break then roll, corrosive6
