Lent

Let me be this shape
found
in the lowering dusk;

this young man at the old
post office window.


The leaves are
depot and gully and shadow -
the trying, the forming,
the giving
and denying
of ancient
sounds and shapes

old as lakes,
and council trees
in unembarrassed clearings,
fire rings.

Let me snag thin fabric
upon thick branches;

upon ballast;

upon thin rails
of water
meeting sky

in river-towns I have
heard bells ringing
outward from
at night.

Let me be this
Barlow-knife shape
of shadow
made by
church doors opened at Easter:

A shadow
that knows
how much it owes
and cannot pay;

a shadow that grasps
after the form
and the light
from which it has been cast.