LONE CRANE

A stance about to form:

drop by drop the dew

burns off, the sun once more declines

so it may rise.

A crane, oracular, faces west

as if in prophecy, its cold, alien gaze

branched from countless chances.

See in the wind that stark shape,

first to last rare as our own.

Dawn glows through lifted wings,

shaped yet shapeless. From the depth

of all losses, grief

is a piercing cry.