The Shape of Stone
A poem for America
The Shape of Stone
A flock of strange birds bathe
in a patch of rain
above my neighbor’s roof.
We’ve never spoken.
The birds take turns piercing
the cloud. I don’t know
what you’d call them.
They’re small.
Sparrows, perhaps.
Some have landed to drink
from the water
that has settled here.
I lift a stone
and find beneath the stone
its shape in soil.
Having done nothing all day,
here is something
I can call work.
This hole, after all,
was not here until
I took the stone
from where it rested,
a cradle formed over years of sky
pressing down,
or something pulling from beneath.