Poem for Today

I'm thinking about poetry today and have to share this wonderful piece from a collection I don't read nearly enough - The Yellow Shoe Poets edited by George Garrett.  This one is called "Earth Elegy" by Margaret Gibson, and it begins:

Rain on the shingles, on the maples--
this evening,
                     ground fog and cloud
mingled in the hollow between the ridges,
and a sorrow so gentle it could be

the mud I took this morning into my hands,
lifting it
              from the garden's slump
of soil and rind, from its cursive sprawl
of blackened vine, turning the garden

after hard frost seared from purple
to black
              the last cosmos.

The rest of the poem is stunning, especially the lines "and the words would / halo and hallow and blur my descent / into the barrow of unknowing / each moment is."

Love.