Morning Is a New Land

The night was long and sectioned,

the past piled up against the glass,

rattled the kitchen door,

shook the hasp and keeper 

until the rain began, and just like that

a new light was leaking through the blinds.

Confident into morning we moved,

into the drip and the fog on the snow,

into the softening woods where we

forgot for a while what was waiting,

no one to ask why the world goes on

accepting more and more rain.

—with lines by Phillip Levine (1928-2015)