How Many Nights
Galway Kinnell

How many nights
have I lain in terror,
O Creator Spirit, maker of night and day,

only to walk out
the next morning over the frozen world,
hearing under the creaking snow
faint, peaceful breaths…
snake,
bear, earthworm, ant…

and above me
a wild crow crying ‘yaw, yaw, yaw’
from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.

“How Many Nights” by Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. © Houghton Mifflin, 2002.