The Day of Small Things - Poem

Commonweal, Sept 28, 2001 by Peter Cooley

   opens on my window as it unveiled itself
   to a small boy fifty years back leaving his sleep.

   This is the solitude so absolute each pear
   on the pear tree in the backyard is a tree,

   each mockingbird a separate melody
   every trill released here, each cloud releasing light

   by gradual delays, then spooling it back,
   day, night, day in measured syncopation.

   Nothing today will need embodiment
   in language until I meet a living soul

   who will replace those residing among headstones of the grass
   thrown open, the squirrel's second coming,

   the worm risen again to answer prayers.
   This is the world remembered before words,

   before the world is taken from the child
   and, broken on the wheel of language, he goes on talking.