"You Are" Poems—Andrew Calis

We’ve invited Andrew Calis to share four previously unpublished poems with the Rabbit Room poetry community. We hope you enjoy these gentle, beautiful poems. You can read more poetry from Andrew in his newest book Which Seeds Will Grow?

You Are


the center of the sky, its heart.
You paint the sunrise lines
in gently blended wonder,
thumb-smudged color that you
speak to life. You are the voice
behind the early songbird songs,
uncurling leaves in spring; you
soak up dew you scattered — 
jewel-beaded drops that turn
abandoned webs to art.
You are the ending, and the start. 

---

You Are


far beyond the mind of man. 
Not of this land, we
cannot capture you in our brute
language. 
                You dodge and dip
like swifts, two, three, one
who now is three if three
were not already more, not already
the sharp wing slicing through
a truth. 
            The blue sky
spreads past the dilating
eye. 
        You are the widening of the world.
This is just a glimpse. Sight tastes 
the gold expanse — larger even than 
the sea; larger than the sky.

---

You Are 


the truth, bedrocked below this surging
storm, bent trees wailing in your wind.
You are the rumbling stratic plates, thundering 
underfoot. We measure what we can.

---

You Are


the owl call I cannot understand,
cannot brush past, that hovers like a cloud
above my head and sticks
like barbs to skin. You are the voice
that woke up Samuel, the voice of Eli too. 
You are nightdarkness, the shadow’s cunning shape,
the twilit forests, blue sky to black again.
You are the journey out, and the footpaths back. 

---

Andrew Calis is a Palestinian-American poet and essayist. He has published in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, The Atlantic, America, Dappled Things, and elsewhere. His work has won various awards, including the Zócalo poetry prize and the poets.org Treehouse Climate Action prize, and his book of poems Which Seeds Will Grow? was nominated for a Pushcart prize. He lives with his family near Baltimore.