Shapes Of Sorrow

"All is distance here.
Look into, never out of, every face.
I’ll let you be my belief if I can be your doubt.

Kind subversions of a kind I couldn’t say.
As our blessed lack of conversation
Has kept me alive so far today.

All my savings soon were spent,
So in the vales of early fall
Under tables, covered rent
By packing bales of barley straw.
With efforts held to circumvent
The watchful eye of federal law,
And Mama thought I’ve been so alone.

My faith in love is still devout!

With solemn sounds, the potter’s ground
Beneath our bare wandering feet.
Our crooked hearts in sacred harp
Sang out the dark inside us deep.
Their shapes of sorrow
Fell like shadows on the farm-to-market roads
That led my stumbling steps back home."