I sit and meditate—my dog licks her paws
on the red-brown sofa
so many things somehow
it all is reduced to numbers letters figures
without faces or names only jagged lines
across the miles half-shadows
going into shadow-shadow then destruction the infinite light
here and there cannot be overcome
it is the first drop of ink
Copyright © 2015 by Juan Felipe Herrera. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 14, 2015, by the Academy of American Poets.