Gently
As a hawk loosed from a headwind,
thunderheads comb the sky’s oyster reefs,
dissipating along the shores.
As you might have rested with my shadow
in the shadow of the hazelnut tree,
teeming intimacies.
As your own hands grafted roots
that drew water like sound under earth,
thoughtfulness lingering
past words and public vigil. Yesterday is now
and many years hence. Children’s faces
float as leaves, butterflies.
Whoever we are, cleaving souls
along the leading edge of the growing block
that is time, accumulating pasts
like beads of an abacus, sliding
one by one across the wooden wire frame,
by whose hand you dimly know,
as fingers pressing silver pieces
villages placed in an infant’s salted bath,
each in recognition of His gift.
David Capps is a philosophy professor and writer based in CT. His latest work appears in Panorama and Necessary Fiction.
Amethyst Review 