there’s no way around it you have to live

i listen for god's voice. demand less clarity than i used to. 
when it rains, for instance, in mid-october i ask is it raining? 

i am willing to let what i love surprise me & grateful, these days, 
to be wrong. but i do know a birch from an aspen. 

i know a magpie when i see one & a cutter too. how the body 
becomes a record—covered, collected, becomes a question— 

who will be a willing witness? living with a chapel, laughing, 
being told to sing, imagine—calling a room with walls 

the oldest church anywhere, four billion birds in flight. 
i am speaking of devotion. how the fiddle fills three voices, 

fall migration, what the body knows, marked as it is for hunger. 
big bluestem in a telling light, i will listen if you speak, 

leave oranges for orioles, search my memory for that walled room 
singing, goodness knows i make mistakes. i am asking—make me right

Kristin Lueke is a Chicana poet living in northern New Mexico. She is the author of the chapbook (in)different math (Dancing Girl Press). Her work's appeared in Sixth Finch, Wildness, HAD, Maudlin House, Frozen Sea, and elsewhere. She writes at theanimaleats.com.