Grant me an audience of one.
My prepared monologue is ready, practiced,
the result of whittling away at the details for decades,
knives and hooks bringing coils of light out of dark wood.

My movement has been the pace of a child examining   
her pockets, collection of the day crumbling to the floor.
My wisdom consists in the weight of goldenrods
arching, folding into the brush, into the road,

and my argument with all its fury commits itself
to the searing red of the sun sinking into the evening.
What is knowledge like for the angel, experience 
of the world an unnecessary beginning, time itself too slow?

I will wrestle that out of you—I will give everything 
for you to taste that patient beginning and know that it is good.