By A Pond

Its face, as calm as the air,
holds an inverted world
of trees and a trembling sky,
and I'm looking at a garden
as far away from my eyes
as if I lay under water.

What the seers and sibyls learned
in their rippling mirrors no one
can say for sure. A dropped stone
would send it flying and show
where the earth begins again.

All I can ask for answers
from what I see in my mirror
are the shades of apple blossoms
over which water striders
lighten the touch of bees
against the mud of heaven.
-- David Wagoner

Straight Talk From Fox

Listen says fox it is music to run
    over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
    the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers but
    far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
    music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
    rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
    writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
    changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
    music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
    if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of every
    moment's miracle. Don't think I haven't
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
    making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
    instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
    home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
    give my life for a thousand of yours.
-- Mary Oliver

This Day, Tomorrow, And The Next

When the blind and the deaf walk
together into the forest, one of them
understands the blackness of light
on a clear day. The other understands
the deep reach of stillness in a riot of green.

Both alike feel on their faces
the floating threads and tatters
of occasional sun passing through
the canopy of overlapping branches,
close thatch of needles, uneven roof
of broad leaves. And both can name
the fragrances of sweet sap and damp
soil, sodden cones, rain-filled mosses.

But neither encounters the burrow
of the fungus beetle leaving her eggs
in the dank of a fallen fir. Neither
is aware of the yellow of the jewelweed
to come. Neither is aware of the taste
of the salmonberry to be. Neither imagines
the spirit-deer made of thicket shadows,
the deer known only when imagined.

Within their inevitable errors
each regrets, each beholds.
Both put their hands the same
into the snow waters of the creek,
the flow pushing equally against
the pressure of their place.
But only one tilts toward the single
twitch-sluff of ground leaf where
the red newt slides. And only
one of them finds and lifts the red
newt from its rust-red leaf.

Each can hold a river-smooth
rock, feel the circle-leading allure
of its edges, remember by finger
and palm the shape and heft
of before the beginning. Within
their frailties, each asserts, each fears.

And for a brief moment either
of them might conceive and come
to love that which exists solely
as the possibility of radiant
green fernleaf fronds spreading
over the forest floor, yellow-green
and black-green fir and cedar,
hemlocks filled with hanging moss
shags, the possibility of a ruffled
spill of lichens, the rip of a steel
blue creek, the chip zeet of dipper,
the slow swing of autumn fog
up the hillside, conceive and love
that possibility alone which attends
steadily without ears and watches
forever without eyes.
-- Pattiann Rogers