Grace Note by W. S. Merwin

.

It is at last any morning
not answering to a name
I wake before there is light
hearing once more that same
music without repetition
or beginning playing
away into itself
in silence like a wave
a unison in its own
key that I seem
to have heard before I
was listening but by the time
I hear it now it is gone
as when on a morning
alive with sunlight
almost at the year’s end
a feathered breath a bird
flies in at the open window
then vanishes leaving me
believing what I do not see

from The Shadow of Sirius
published by Copper Canyon Press 2009

www.coppercanyonpress.org