May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful.
		Mary Oliver, “Upstream”

Lift the page to your face, 
the voice says. The sea is 

in the page, in a box. I lift it 
to my face. Elicit the sea, 

the voice requires. Inhabit the sea.
You can write for decades 

& not say the one true thing,
which is not I’m sorry. . .

I did not know. . . Hear: sunlight. 
Fire smokes off a star 

like the composite of ruin.
It is April & spring is still 

struggling to escape its paper bag. 
The voice says do not hesitate,

we cannot wait another decade. 
Addicted to finishing & saving,

to holding off & paying back. 
& yet—there is more.
 
The brocade tapestry of sober 
afternoons. From brocco, small nail. 

Tell me, where do you go
when where you go is gone?

Is devotion more or less 
useful than this?