We Hesitate

The days to come are a watershed.

You have to improve your portrait of God

To make it plain. It is on the list,

You and your bodies are on the line.

The new past now unfurls like a great somber hope

Above the treeline, like a giant's hand

Placed tentatively on the hurrying clouds.

The basins come to be full and complex.

But it is not enough. Concern and embarrassment

Grow rank. Once they have come home there is no cursing.

Fires disturb the evening. No one can hear the story.

Or sometimes people just forget

Like a child. It took me months

To get that discipline banned, and what is the use,

To ban that? You remain a sane, yet sophisticated, person:

Rooted in twilight, dreaming, a piece of traffic.