Window

by John Blair

We whistle tunes while
God’s work gets done above us
in trees locked in screes

of bagworm silk
and dead leaves, streetlights smeared
into glowing rictal

happiness across
the sidewalks. The woman who
always watches us

as we walk by yawns
or screams, soundless in a frame
of glasspaned light.

Maybe something,
some old pain dropped silk–tickle
at her feet like half–

lizard offerings
of cat love, has called her night
after relentless night

to the one window
that opens onto our sad
march into alone

unwinding between
a summer’s worth of dry yards,
to wail like Meister

Eckhart that every
creature is a word of God,
and it’s not that she

wants us to care or
change a thing, but that no one
can leave a story

unturned, can stuff it
like the sweat–bee buzz of self
inside to hunker,

sunburnt chromium
in the high–savage heat
of feline midnight,

where some faltered pair
of strolling shades slips clockwork
by in self–conscious

silence on the leaf–
strewn stage of her anchorite
attention, God’s words

sung sotto voce
but with feeling, fading soft
into the darkness.