NIGHT VISITOR

Shift workers must sense this,
Timeshare holders:
Someone in my space,
Handling my things.
He left a paw print
On the cottage wall
Below the hummingbird feeder,
Which he could not reach;
Tipped over the garbage house;
Leaves ursine, berry-laden calling cards,
That tell us he is not a raccoon.
And he suspects,
Ammonia, absence of thistle seed,
That we are on to him, as is he to us,
Presences apprehended, unseen.




ON LISTENING AGAIN TO A CHORAL REQUIEM
November 2011

The Kyrie: haunted themes float, wistfully,
Like specks caught in the morning light
Through the rose window,
Over the tenors’ heads,
Somber, uplifting. Keys change.
The composer, we learn,
Was not himself a man of faith.
It’s a living, one might jest;
But denser than that,
A searching after spirit beyond creed.
I thought of
Handel, Caravaggio,
Other offerings to,
Gifts from, a God
Acknowledged or not.