These holes in my soul are small enough
to sort the ace of hearts from the 52,
a precision of mesh issued with fissures to measure
and entrap picayune certainties—
assurances, one might say. I search
for the sure, shivering off
to the wind gritty statements of faith.

I trust only that which won't
evade my weave, everything else
falls filtered too fine for me
to understand.

For this, I am accused
of being a coarse woman,
insensitive to every minute oblique beauty:

to rebel rays of sun
that revolt violent to oil
staining the pavement autocraticaly black;

to the virgin dignity of an unstruck
matchstick stuck to book alone,
lording order over stubs;

the noise of pouring hot POP! over ice,
the way it screams eponymous,
the narcissist,

to the atomic orange of a cardinal's beak—
Good God! What do they feed these birds?
They must peck at toxic waste.

I am not insensitive at all.

I feel these amalgams of grace
as they slip through my hashes,
my screen, too obtuse, too flimsy
to catch every act of radiance...
living is a sifting through,
and to notice is to loose.