Late Murmur

Late Murmur

Scott Cairns

—this familiar pulse beginning
in the throat

Could it be the heart’s late attempt to call
attention to itself, a stuttered nudge
that the pilgrim pause just now to attend

to time’s deleterious effects? Yes,
it might could be exactly that. My heart’s
just fine, for now. How’s yours? One needn’t wait

for calamity to consider course
correction, nor even to entertain
recourse altogether. Evening

proves a likely time for reappraisal.
This evening, I notice, to the west,
how little snowpack remains trenched upon

the western range. The evening haze has
thickened, coloring the mountains a faint
blue, one shade darker than the western sky.

This evening, the familiar pulse sends
its recurrent, if mostly neglected
message: mercy, mercy, mercy, mercy.

---

Scott Cairns
Reader Who Writes

Scott Cairns’ poetry collections include Idiot Psalms, Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems, and Anaphora. His prose books include The End of Suffering and Short Trip to the Edge. You can find other poems at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/scott-cairns

Photography by Simon Berger