So he who strongly feels, behaves.        —Marianne Moore

You find in an alley the mouthpiece of a flute. Gossip alone makes music

and suddenly from the pines the birds all fly away.

You are devoted to giving clear meaning to one movement. The water in the fountain.

Down the fountain. Over it. The prayer chapel but its brick bench. Magnolias

in almost bloom. The failure to believe in mathematics is a failure of emotion—

you have spent all of your free time. Choral directors describe

the torso in terms of the muscles of sound. Your wife paints your two-year-old’s fingernails

and the two-year-old says, toes too! Sitting next to an anthill feels like this. They work so hard.

And for so little. For salvation. This is the mystery. This is forgiveness.