Love

Another poem struck into being by seeing
a vee of geese overhead, a wing-shape

that's composed of its several dozen element-wings
on loan to the greater body. This becomes an argument

(of isolation versus community) given immediate,
visible form; a stream is taking the mountain

away, but at a pace we'll never see—unlike
this sky-adorning passage timed

by mere coincidence to human comprehension.
And we learn, by the absorption of these single, scattered creatures

into one majestic pattern, how a proper use
of "beauty" is in service

to "beatitude"—the rising of a concept
into something more, some larger, further order

of existence. I suspect I'm not
the only one who's stood here with the groceries leaking

out of the paper bag, and the volts that bump in the heart
like small trapped minnows of longing, and our evanescence

burning in the way that a leaf is a green flame
on its ordained path to orange—here, defined

by "the futility of work in the face of destruction"
(the phrase is Rachel Cohen's)—and looked up

to imagine he belonged with them, but
was abandoned, missed the call

to gather and to lift as one, so now
can only stare at their increasing distance,

maybe in the way that, once, the Lost Tribes
looked to see the rest of Israel

continue warring and praying and sowing
and loving by starlight

into the future without them.