If you throw clouds a long way off into the sky
And wait, they will come down again

Back into the near sky,
Your heart, your soul,

The rainbows that plunge
and the valleys where the streams flow.

And you will know that heaven is a little
bit nearer
Then anyone suspects.

Right here, in fact.
You just don't remember it
Do you?

Sitting over words
Very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
Not far
Like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
The echo of everything that has ever
Been spoken
Still spinning its one syllable
Between the earth and silence

—Lee Van Laer, Parabola's Poetry Editor