by Peter Balakian

The day comes in strips of yellow glass over trees.

When I tell you that day is a poem
I’m only talking to you and only the sky is listening.

The sky is listening; the sky is as hopeful
as I am walking into the pomegranate seeds
of the wind that whips up the seawall

If you want the poem to take on everything,
walk into a hackberry tree,
then walk out beyond the seawall.

I’m not far from a room whereVan Gogh
was a patient–his head on a pillow hearing
the mistral careen off the seawall,

hearing the fauvist leaves pelt
the sarcophagi. Here and now

the air of tepidarium kissed my jaw
and pigeons ghosting in the blue loved me

for a second, before the wind
broke branches and gutted into the river.

– from Ozone Journal