From Inside

Some weather made the windows pearled,

and our rooms occurred around us with more gentleness

than on the other days, far more than nights we woke

without meaning to. We'd seen

blunt-ended feathers from the blue-black tails of crows

land, quill down, among the angular and secretive

pinecones in a neighbor's yard,

or, sleeping on a mountainside,

we felt aware of hidden birds aware of us

as we woke and looked at something, anything;

or coming down the stairs, we heard, in olden clock-notes,

in the four strikes of a quarter hour, the promise of

a cumulative truth, each event

building more events. But when our rooms were quieted

we also heard the slight, interior, wooden, pre-chime knock

and thought the world had signaled us

from where the other worlds were hid.