After Hafiz

Who can say how many spoonfuls of dirt it takes

the prisoner to tunnel out of sorrow,

or how long those bound and gagged by fear have

to work on the knots at their wrists?

For the mourner no one’s as real as the beloved

flickering up ahead. What ocean wave, sand storm,

house fire is large enough to draw the aggrieved

out of anguish? Those without God –

who unlocks for them the sealed room

in which they languish, who teaches them

to snap the window shade their grief has pulled,

and look outside? When they get to the station

and the train’s pulled out, who do they thank

for the newly mopped floors, the flowers

wilting in plastic tubs, unlit places and names

up on the board like stars waiting to be plugged in?

This surprise, this almost blinding rush of air-

what the bird feels when the egg first cracks?

Betsy Sholl of Portland is Maine’s poet laureate. Hafiz of the poem’s title was a mystical poet of 14th century Persia.