By Sharon Ann Jaeger

Where souls cannot speak, not even look, they must meet
in the shared breath that fills this arc of a world.

In this entry to Eden, how bittersweet to linger
at the margins of a paradise that almost cannot be.

Each house-cube, angled, matte, is a painting, not a home;
the roads, untenanted, unspool from field to field,

bearing their goal within themselves, knowing the end
when they get there. So we should also go:

to have one’s will of the world
will not do, yet I am not reconciled.

All I see is subsumed into such a blast of light,
a red mist in my eyes, that the world at my feet

seems to swim far below like a fish in tears.
My breath lifts away in the wind, I barely stir.

The birds are everywhere. Each calls and calls
to its own rhythm, in an over-and-over tune. Who could tell

which answers which? If they are turning in for muster,
all are present and accounted for. Their sounds in motion

span all space, opening it wider to the merciless light
as the ever-starker shadows marking off

the day that slips away from us ration the moments
one by one, as into another dimension

the sun will slide forever, the bright birds fall silent
and the stars blink into being to show the hidden

face of the turning world. So I keep steady in my mind
what peace I know, his still, clear gaze.