Reading Louise Gluck

Reading Louise Gluck,
on a train, in a narrow tunnel,
I learn what it must be to love only the earth,
to seek from its brown, sodden silence, a resonance.
To replay personal truths and falsehoods,
in a lonely musical arc.

As a young woman
buoyed by my loves,
I see Louise in the doorway,
conversing with the snow,
the songbird and the frozen trees,
then moving inward to tend the hearth,
and I vow that if I were to someday lose my loves
I would learn the succor of nature
and feel the reverberation of many souls,
as I walked barefoot on the earth.