JOHN PECK
Ordo Novum
They come in slowly,
rules
for the new way of life,
sift gradually
across the task,
first-snow
ghostly though myriad
past glass by the desk,
they. spell out their
proVlsIOns
persistently, slanting them
through years, through air.
Until once, there,
bent over
words beginning
w,
I snagged on
war,
wife
and
woman
then
widower wanderer wait
all in the human
wink of slippage,
then
wisdom
the balancer,
and made rummage
through the white thousands
dusky
beyond my window and tallied
one of the new ends,
its regimen:
each day
to experience dawn once
but also again.
