Here Once in Another Year

by Bill Howell

Waiting to hear, since echoes itself
with every presence left as it was.
So much hanging where words won’t find us.
So much love left, such as it is.

Not so much a flood
as a breath of fresh weather
rising through restless clouds baffling
the best of luffing sails, the rush of arcing wings.

Ambient shadows unravel their own resonance,
can’t remember the way it is.
But bodies, being the way they are,
still know the way we were.

Something’s laughing at our sense of place.
Could this be the day we become divine?
Here at last, there’s no getting even—only going on.
Echoes of each other, we join the larger silence.

— from Juniper Volume 3, Issue 1