Crate Full of Mysteries

Who knows the dark trick that turns the crying of night,
The howl in the storm, sad sounds sighed in bed, 
Too grim to enjoy, into hard, sweet love
Dark cannot destroy must be a poet,

If not quite satanic, not quite a witch,
An engraver confusing blood for ink
And sharp-edged confession for precision
At least. That's what I used to think when young

And squirming to become such a pilgrim,
Not realizing prepositions redeem
More truth than propositions, dangerous
To forget when training to be a liar.

Words turn into other worlds inside things,
The details of which remain mysteries.
Worming inside a crate of poems I saw
That the lost years were good, the found better,

A gift within a gift within a box
Within a pile of forgotten papers
In an office within a library
Housed inside a glass-and-brick cube that stands

At the foot of a university
Within a sprawling suburbopolis
On the slope of a foothill just over
A long, flat lake just under the mountains

White with ice, sharp as knives slicing a sky
Grown feathery soft and thickened with smog
From pilgrimage, for which I am grateful.