The White Rose

This is the earth? Then

I don't belong here.

Who are you in the lighted window,

shadowed now by the flickering leaves

of the wayfarer tree?

Can you survive where I won't last

beyond the first summer?

All night the slender branches of the tree

shift and rustle at the bright window.

Explain my life to me, you who make no sign,

though I call out to you in the night:

I am not like you, I have only

my body for a voice; I can’t

disappear into silence—

And in the cold morning

over the dark surface of the earth

echoes of my voice drift,

whiteness steadily absorbed into darkness

as though you were making a sign after all

to convince me you too couldn’t survive here

or to show me you are not the light I called to

but the blackness behind it.