Selected Poems

from Daily Horoscope

• The Burning Ladder
• California Hills in August
• The Country Wife
• Insomnia
• Sunday Night in Santa Rosa

from The Gods of Winter

• Money
• The Next Poem
• Planting a Sequoia
• Prayer
• Rough Country

from Interrogations at Noon

• The Litany
• The Lost Garden
• Summer Storm
• Unsaid
• Words

Prayer

Echo of the clocktower, footstep
in the alleyway, sweep
of the wind sifting the leaves.

Jeweller of the spiderweb, connoisseur
of autumn’s opulence, blade of lightning
harvesting the sky.

Keeper of the small gate, choreographer
of entrances and exits, midnight
whisper travelling the wires.

Seducer, healer, deity or thief,
I will see you soon enough—
in the shadow of the rainfall,

in the brief violet darkening a sunset—
but until then I pray watch over him
as a mountain guards its covert ore

and the harsh falcon its flightless young.

from The Gods of Winter
© 1991 Dana Gioia