I Speak Instead

When what I can’t find words for counts the most,
I speak instead of slanted rain or long
cold roads laid flat from range to range, more lost
than any small Nevada town, the song

of power lines the wind plays, limp and thick,
and never heard and never meant to be,
and yet whose music still could strike the quick
and animate the dead and set them free.

Or else I simply sit beneath a lamp,
amid the vast complexity of all
I love and dream, a book closed in my lap,
perhaps A Guide to Birds or Rise and Fall.

Where words won’t go is truth and joy and pain.
I settle for some lamplight in the rain.