Thursday, November 17, 2011

Illuminated

Day 17

Starting out into the cold:
wallet, keys, phone, moon,
who cares what becomes
of the soundless dark?

Something like holiness avoids:
hides behind a maple tree,
hugs the stubblefield,
hangs like dying moss:
        a falling leaf.

Landscape opens into noise:
birdsong, wind-play, leaves,
where all this light comes from,
no one is around to say.

Something like a prayer slips away:
a newly antlered deer deciding:
stay, go, stay, go, go, go
& then it’s lost somewhere:
   a hawk gone on the wing.

Somewhere a pond begins to ice:
the edges ripple less & less,
the heron stops visiting,
fattened cows are led away.

The sun, rising earlier & earlier
illuminates a landscape that grows:
farther & farther & farther,
everything in a new light,
everything in its right place:
everything is full of change.

1 comment:

  1. "where all this light comes from, / no one is around to say" is my favorite line--there are so many ways to read it.

    It's interesting that you included "something like a prayer" a line I like very much, because this poem is a prayer.

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