The First Line Of A Poem

Before it flutters into my mouth,
I might spend days squinting
into the wind
like an old man
trying to thread a needle
by a window
in the dying light of late afternoon.

In a chair,
he aims the limp end
at the dim glint
of the impossible eye,
narrower than the door of heaven
or the sliver of moon
that will not rise
from behind pines

until the needle
finally slides
along the thin loop
and he eases
into his all-night stitching,
sipping the new wine,
singing a song
the color of his thread.