sunset in an upstairs window,
the passion of things: finches, hemlocks,
white-footed mice in the attic,
spotted newts in the cellar,
the place on the horizon
where Sugar Loaf meets the light,
the moon crossing the sky,
waxing and waning, out of and into
the woods that surround us,
the stars above our heads.
We never understood the life
we've lived, and not the one now,
stopped still in the evening
of our private world,
rolling back
into the mystery to come.
—a cento of adapted lines from Linda Gregg's "All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems"
