The Meek

What is this sadness that steals my sleep,
when even the owl is morose, despondent
in a season of rabbits and beetles?

A band of crows burrowed in oak trees
stare through heat, their hollowed bones
cracking and burning. Tonight,the moth

clings to worm-eaten wood, ignores the flame,
flightless, heartbroken. Heaven's stairway,
each rung made of star withdraws its glittering

feet from its mountain platform.

Then, like a solo guitar, intuitively beautiful,
a single cricket his shivering song emulating joy
twists my heart into a smile, confirms the parable:

the meek shall inherit the earth.