How Quiet

Judith Harris

How quiet is the spruce,

the wind twills

through the uppermost tier

of splayed leaves.

Now the song of a bird

like the squeaky lock

over a canoe's oar,

followed by startling chirps,

the sky pushing its clouds

like sailboats,

and I think, what kind of God

keeps himself secret

so that to find him out

we have to seek, as children do

for something like the beetle

scuttling between grass,

hidden in plain sight.