KATHLEEN PEIRCE

From Inside

Some weather made the windows pearled,
and our rooms occurred around us with more gentleness
than on the other days, far more than nights we woke
without meaning to. We'd seen
blunt-ended feathers from the blue-black tails of crows
land, quill down, among the angular and secretive
pinecones in a neighbor's yard,
or, sleeping on a mountainside,
we felt aware of hidden birds aware of us
as we woke and looked at something, anything;
or coming down the stairs, we heard, in olden clock-notes,
in the four strikes of a quarter hour, the promise of
a cumulative truth, each event
building more events. But when our rooms were quieted
we also heard the slight, interior, wooden, pre-chime knock
and thought the world had signaled us
from where the other worlds were hid.