I’m Nobody! Who are you?

Are you – Nobody – too?

Then there’s a pair of us!

Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Somebody!

How public – like a Frog –

To tell one’s name – the livelong June –

To an admiring Bog!

with design by Anthony Cody 

Near the end of April 
   On the verge of May—
And o my heart, the woods were dusk 
   At the close of day.

Half a word was spoken
   Out of half a dream,
And God looked in my soul and saw 
   A dawn rise and gleam.

Near the end of April
   Twenty Mays have met,
And half a word and half a dream 
   Remember and forget.

What we need has always been inside of us.

For some—a few poets or farmers, perhaps—

it’s always near the surface. Others, it’s buried.

It was in our original design, though—pre-machine,

pre-border, pre-pandemic. I imagine it like the light

one might feel through the body before dying,

a warm calm, a slow breath, a sweet rush.

There is, by every measure, reason for fear,

concern, a concert in the balcony of anxiety

made of what has also always been inside of us:

a kind of knowing that everything could break.

But it hasn’t quite yet and probably won’t.

What I mean to say is, I had a daydream

and got lost inside of it. There were dozens

of birds for some reason, who sounded like

they were singing in different accents:

shelter in place, shelter in place.

You’re made of stars and grace.

Stars and grace. Stars—and grace.