yet he looked to it for answers
under a sky as pale as ash,
hoping to be star-seized as the day ended.
The faces came to him when he slept.
He knew them all, the long-dead from his youth,
those who seemed to care, the older generations,
silent, all around him, depths unfathomable.
He should have asked them when he could.
Now old himself, the mysteries to the child
remained the mysteries to the man.
He should have asked.
This, then, the haunt of a poet's life,
trying again and again until he nearly got it right,
reaching into his own unfathomable depth
for what almost existed, or once did,
Risking visitations, frights in the dark,
listening hard, waiting for answers,
making again and again until the last voice
sounded like the first voice in weather.
