And God's Presence, Will You Ever Speak of That?

And God's Presence, Will You Ever Speak of That?

Christian Wiman

How, say, in spring, quarantined,
and the air, it seemed, inhumane,
we walked where never, and farther,
we’d been,

and under overgrown thistles
(we crouched)
that made a kind of cave
(we touched)

over moss that gave
a kind of give,
we hobbited half-laughing and half-alarmed
this was a place unmeant

for us—
until, one by one emerging
into a clearing, bits of blue
needling through needles

of high pines, we lay, the two of us,
bonded and islanded by fear,
and, too, by what we hadn’t named but knew
was here, somewhere,

as, high up, spooked or synced, a tree released
its shadows, two of them,
oaring over the water,
plumed, light-limned, heroned?

---

Christian Wiman
Poet & Author

Chrisian is a poet, the former editor of Poetry Magazine, and Author of Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair, along with many other books.

Photography by Diana D.S.