Alan Bern, Cattedrale blu, 2021
Digital photograph
Dampness has blackened tree trunks and pavement.
Pedestrians fold their papers under jackets
and duck inside. Artificial light
illumines them, their faces confined
to window squares, each to one’s self.
I turn the key in my lock and curl into
into my own inward singing, which others
don’t hear or understand.
When silence arrives, I rise
from my solitary halo and look outside.
My windows look out on vaulted
jewel-colored ceilings.
Water trickles, sinuous and urgent,
running downhill, merging with other streams.
I imagine the rain’s music continuing
somewhere far-off in the woods, unheard,
once it has come to a lull elsewhere.
I’d like to go off into the woods and find it.