repentance
BY F. DANIEL RZICZNEK
j
If gravity cannot be shaken
like an immense breath reversed,
then there was never
the voice and never the chorus—
never snow gathering you up,
no mornings spent gauging
your own stubbornness swaying
in the sky’s branches: dark
globes fewer until just one,
then days passing without
that last walnut dangling on.
The sound entered, a wind
rhyming everything with else
and the room shuddered,
hit heaven and fell flat
while the snow collected more
and more of you: grown child
testing the errand of light, ears
scanning the unhorizoned years
until tuned again to North.