Poems with Repetition

Every night I visit a house I have never lived in but my hands know where the light switch is. The kitchen has a window facing a garden I've never planted but I know the roses need cutting and the gate won't close unless you lift it slightly on the hinge. There is someone in the other room. I can hear them moving— the clink of cup on saucer, a page being turned— but when I get there the room is empty and the tea is warm and the book is open to a page I almost understand. I have lived my whole waking life in the house I'm awake in. But I have loved longer in this one— the one with the difficult gate and the tea still warm and the someone always just leaving.

Even now, when nothing seems to hold, Nothing keeps the dark from pressing close— Dawn is just a rumor, barely told, Under weight of everything that froze. Rest. Then try the morning. Try the light. Even winter ends. Even this night.

Praise the cracking open of the seed, the blind ambition of the buried root, the robin's first bewildered, breathless creed that spring has come—has come—despite the soot. Praise July and all its heavy gold, the hammock's patient theology of rest, the peach that gives its sweetness uncontrolled, the bee that stumbles, drunken, from its quest. Praise the trees undressing, unashamed, their final show before the long goodbye, the pumpkin sitting fatly, orange, unnamed, the geese rehearsing arrows for the sky. Praise the hush. The candle and the snow. The year gone dark. The faith in what we know.