Poem for a Wednesday – “Knowing God” by Mark Nepo

Oh lone crazed bird
singing in the night–

you sing with your whole body
while the rest of us sleep.

I go to close the window
when my wife touches my arm
and we listen.

You call out
like a saint robbed of words.

Are you blind and trapped
in a vision of sun?

Or do you simply see farther
than the rest of us?

Do you see the light coming?

Do you feel the beads of warmth
forming in the dark?

Oh what has stirred
that thing in you that sings?

Stir me now.
Sing me clean.

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Originally published in Acre of Light, a chapbook by Mark Nepo that documents his experience of cancer. Lewisten, NY: Mellen Poetry Press, 1993.

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