Waiting

With no enduring city here, no
homestead or ancestral cemetery
to ground a sense of belonging,

what reaches in to shape a vision
is beauty. Hey, it's everywhere:
not only in lakes and flower gardens,

but peeking over a Kmart facade
and slanting off parking lot puddles.
Compositions abound, planned

and haphazard, that leak the news:
yes, here, too, beauty tabernacles
among us—the way an abandoned

shopping cart points to the white
Salvation Army donation bin and,
beyond, toward a stand of trees

hung with crows that crowds
the lot's perimeter. Salvation. Now
there's a beautiful rumor: that I may

trade-in my load of moral pain, my fear
of being found out and shamed,
and right away recover a bit of what

I most want to see more of:
the beauty of holiness.
                                                Here,

stationed solo on the paved crown
of this hill, parked and waiting
for my family, I follow the crows'

jerky line of flight as they rise up
from their rain-darkened perches
and set out for nowhere in particular.

Copyright © 2006 Brad Davis All rights reserved
from Tar River Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission