A WORLD OF LIGHT
If I close my eyes now, I can still see them
canopied by the visor of my sunhat:
three children islanded on a narrow rim
of earth between the huge crack-willow that
they squat before, hushed, poised to net a frog,
and the pond the frog will jump to (it got away)
a glass its dive will shatter.
The unbroken image
pleases my mind's eye with its density,
such thick crisscross of tree-trunk, earth, and tall grass
I see no breach, no source for the light that steeps it
but a blue burning in the pond's green glass.
The grass withered, the tree blew down, earth caught
the frog, the children grew. Sky's ice-blue flame
teased along the wick it would consume.
If I close my eyes now, I can still see them
canopied by the visor of my sunhat:
three children islanded on a narrow rim
of earth between the huge crack-willow that
they squat before, hushed, poised to net a frog,
and the pond the frog will jump to (it got away)
a glass its dive will shatter.
The unbroken image
pleases my mind's eye with its density,
such thick crisscross of tree-trunk, earth, and tall grass
I see no breach, no source for the light that steeps it
but a blue burning in the pond's green glass.
The grass withered, the tree blew down, earth caught
the frog, the children grew. Sky's ice-blue flame
teased along the wick it would consume.