The Gathering

I am all these things you've named:
breathing and bell, sound and the absence 
of sound, wound and its slow movement
toward mending. And I have tried to open 
these arms to unfathomable night, bent to hear
what the earth might have caught of its saying. 
We've replaced the lamps battered by storms, 
picked the fruit flung from trees, rinsed
the dirt off their faces in basins of cool
water. I wanted to stitch frayed hems,
restore missing pairs of things to each
other as the moon raised its mottled plate 
again over the garden. Under a bed, a small white
gleam: either a pearl, or a pill lost from its bottle.