“GospelThe new grass rising in the hills,the cows loitering in the morning chill,a dozen or more old browns hiddenin the shadows of the cottonwoodsbeside the streambed. I go higherto where the road gives up and there’sonly a faint path strewn with lupinebetween the mountain oaks. I don’task myself what I’m looking for.I didn’t come for answersto a place like this, I came to walkon the earth, still cold, still silent.Still ungiving, I’ve said to myself,although it greets me with last year’sdead thistles and this year’s hard spines, early bloomingwild onions, the curling remainsof spider’s cloth. What did I bring to the dance? In my back pocketa crushed letter from a womanI’ve never met bearing bad newsI can do nothing about. So I wanderthese woods half sightless whilea west wind picks up in the treesclustered above. The pines makea music like no other, rising and falling like a distant surf at nightthat calms the darkness before first light. “Soughing” we call it, fromOld English, no less. How weightlesswords are when nothing will do.”

− Philip Levine −