June
What can fill a hole if not
a word from holy muted tongues?
What can tell a caterpillar
to crash into the open sky?
What can make a stone grow?
What describes the wind?
Only wind. Only four knots
of branch that bloom into a tree
and then four trees and spread
into eight and twelve and thirty dozen trees
rising clean through the dirt
that once was bare and flat
but now holds the earth above its head.
What can make a river twist?
What can drop a feather faster than a bone?
What can snap a padlock made
of bedrock into drops of water
from a deadened dock?
What drowns the tide beneath a seed?
Only seed. Only a single whisper of a shell
that sprouts a root and then four thousand roots
that hold the current past the bush
of tongues that grow to say a single word
that pollinates the stream.
What can fill a hole? The absence of a hole.
