Summer aches with what longs to loosen,
Awet fall leaf hits clapboards. By winter
She pulls back into ice, but even then gives herself away;
To push myself right up to her, looking hard into
What it is she leaves behind. I believed I'd learn
How to change my life, like getting in a car and slamming the pedal
Until it goes into beauty, then beyond
Beauty, then staying there, until my blood also starts
To give itself away. Only I am still
In my own room, talking myself into a new gratitude.
Each evening a transaction breaks the landscape:
Achild at the door, the cow crossing to the barn.
Only then does the light finally change. The child
Wants to know about trees not growing to the sky,
About rivers running north, about the length ofnight:
The cow makes deep sounds, the old complaint,
And the light fulls suddenly like that,
Down into patient arms
Yet has been falling all afternoon, giving itself away: the great
Wheel turns, gently passes over mountains,
Over their dark green breaths, over my blood
That curls and uncurls waiting, over all that time
I was sure something was wrong,
Over those democracies that she will always bring
Of
cow, ice, light, and child.
Each with a gift for the other: it is perhaps
Without waiting or corresponding to anything at all.
