The light that falls on it

The universe had no signs for me till
these days of lunch bags
and sensible work blouses

when I drive home through the park, through
stands of poplars quivering.
The loosed sun’s desire for them

is their first taste of tenderness.
More and more, the trees approach me and
want to tell me something,

their green-gold shafts
lit in their paradise of trees. Time, they say,
touching my lips, is like this—

capable of blessing, emancipated from
blood. Every trunk flashes and stays in
hundredfold visitation.

Once, on a train from Vermont: bridges
divided the flooded glades, when on a hill,
dry beside a red barn,

nine black & white heifers raised their
heads in unison like heliotropes, like saints
from the coming age.

For a long time they turned in the
direction of my train, its grimy
reprise of daybreak,

and I could not tell them all I had
to say, soldered in my metal box, pulled south
through the diesel spatter.

____

Mirande Bissell is a poet and teacher who lives in the Patapsco River Valley, west of Baltimore. Her first collection of poems, Stalin at the Opera, was selected by Diane Seuss as the 2020 winner of the Ghost Peach Press Prize and came out in 2021.