Grace Note
It is at last any morning
not answering to a name
I wake before there is light
hearing once more that same
music without repetition
or beginning playing
away into itself
in silence like a wave
a unison in its own
key that I seem
to have heard before I
was listening but by the time
I hear it now it is gone
as when on a morning
alive with sunlight
almost at the year’s end
a feathered breath a bird
flies in at the open window
then vanishes leaving me
believing what I do not see
— W.S. Merwin, from The Shadow of Sirius, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, published by Copper Canyon Press, 2009
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Photo by Rosa Say used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.