It Is Very Often as Though

We live softly damned, damnation

a small thing built into the body. All

around us: apples and auguries, poems

that speak the small prayers which keep

a weary heart singing. And when we

grasp that small music, incomplete,

approximate, fallible as the body of flesh

that lives to bear it, we can rise up, oh-

we rise and we damn near catch fire.