SANCTUARY

While it rains
and rains,

putting the alley sparrows

and the cardinal 

who sings 

in the park out of work,

I am grateful
to be employed at all—

let alone so gainfully
building a vast new city
of expressivity—

or at least 

a whole district
of rhetorical churches—

or at least a neat
row of simple
dwellings made of words—

or at least adequate shelving
in the dry narrow galley
kitchen of my mind

for those aforementioned 

birds to perch on.