We all want to leave this widening night,
this barking at the thing we can’t see.
No one walks through their story un-stung.
This yard, this life, like a book of changes,
the moment buzzing by like a prophecy,
your body a constellation of pain.
We spend our time stumbling through the white fog,
searching the doctrine of our own breath
when all we need do is crawl deep inside
the silence that comes after and face
the teeming hole in the ground, the wasp’s nest,
that cousin of the eyelessness of space.
Do not fear the ache and swell my sweet boy.
It’s easy to hate what we’re given.
Copyright © 2021 by Peter Grandbois. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 30, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.