Every thrill in us creates unease,
his father said, giving him permission
to risk the journey; to go a little farther.

But then, he asked himself, what of the woods
beyond the river that hold a cello in them.
Or the childhood yard made large in us.

Even morning asks is there wilderness
that calms. If so, why. What is it exactly.
What in the sky that cools the land it stirs.

Or the brash magnolias that wave their silks,
that flag down the traffic of the wind.
Why feather the eye with flowered branches.

Is it not for the glow of the naked nerve
that the night bird opens the dark a moment,
or the painting shoots deep into the gaze

its arrows of green, as if want could be
a still thing, somewhere between the dead
and the living, the root and the wing.