Possible Psalm

When I saw light the sculptor chiseling sheer bluff
from slope — the punk wood landing as shadow
in down-mountain saddles, a coarse grit teasing out
the basalt’s facelike features, then finer grains
crazing the air with duff —

I said aloud good light: as if it were dog or obedient
child, as if there were some other kind. As if it had not by then
vanished into that antipodal room, the work shrouded in dark sheet.

Chris Dombrowski is the author of the memoir Body of Water (Milkweed Editions), a Bloomberg News Best Book of 2016, as well as three full length collections of poetry, most recently Ragged Anthem (WSUP, 2019). His poems have appeared in over a hundred anthologies and journals including Guernica, Gulf Coast, Orion, Poetry, Terrain.org, and The Southern Review. For the better part of two decades, he has taught creative writing to a vast array of age groups, most recently as the William Kittredge Visiting Writer-in-Residence in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Montana. He lives in Missoula, where he guides the rivers, directs the Beargrass Writing Workshops, and makes his home with his loveably feral family.