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.