The Night, The Porch : Poem in Your Post

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart

What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself

To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.

Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.

What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort

Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux

Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting

For something whose appearance would be its vanishing—

The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,

Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there

Tells us as much, and was never written with us in mind.

                                                     Mark Strand

Knopf's been celebrating National Poetry Month with a daily email offering samples from new volumes by their finest poets, and this one knocked me over.  I hope you find it lovely too, and that you'll keep stopping by each weekend to enjoy a new "Poem In Your Post".

MFB,
L

p.s.  If one is fine, then two might just be finer.  Why not stop by My Head Is Full of Books for a second poem today?