Editor's note: I read this poem through once and then read it again carefully and slowly, taking in all of the images and reflecting on my own experiences with the visions that occur when one catches great flashes of, for lack of a better word, God or holiness in small and bigger objects that float freely around us. Asha is one of the underground's great treasures and her writing continues to inspire and awe me.

DRIFT

I've been up all night writing and re-writing tomorrow
watching the stars
tick across the sky
around midnight
the Big Dipper
is just beyond my window
by 3 am
only stars
no names
then
in the hush before dawn
when time slows nearly to a stop
I see my grandmother's dog
the one she made live outside
the entire North Dakota winter
his pleading
cold-crazed eyes
a sad
two-star constellation
they shot him in the spring.

The sun doesn't rise
the world
falls face first
into its light
finds its mark
resumes the
fiction of the day
with regret
I sense
before I can see
the holy dark dissolve
into grainy morning
here and there a bird
stirs in its feathers
before long
they are on the roof
rattling the gutters
pecking at the tiles
one of these days
they will pull
the house beam out
and the whole thing
will fall down.

If morning brings a promise
it is a simple thread
strung between opposites
requiring
a wire dance
in thin air.