Vocation

More my shadow than my shadow,

it is mute, as it must be.

I walk it along the world’s wide road,

chanting its reticence; what I think it might say

if it could, or wished to.

If it snags on the hedgerow,

a nest is a choir I could hold on a glove.

In love, its surface shines like ink;

I dip my pen again.

But it hoards grief, sometimes for years.

So I am supplicant; alert at the lip

of wordlessness, how can I tell?

Or it circles me, a sundial’s slow arrow,

patient, waiting to cover my face

with its scrap of black silk.

Though should it stand still in the lane,

Even the empty chapel speaks in chimes.

I have known it: difficult, accessible.

It is the taste of imminent weather.

If its eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon.