He read in places where birds assemble wind and storm
a billion years of light cutting the round of a lime
in two. It has always been true that his symbol is light.
He can be found in shaded spaces under stone, ice,
in the scatter of color in the beds after rain
or the buzz of the wasp trapped in a honey drop.
A child’s word flits like a butterfly at every dawn
not too big but just the right length
to land on a mushroom bulb appearing
on a spot suddenly at the foot of a tree
still warm from the garden lamps. The sun rises
and he sees a bear hunched and paint-spotted
emerge from the village street to mutter and yawn
at the sky. The bear sits, the man sits. Both wonder
at a word drifting, like a feather, from off the green.
It finds rest on the grass between them and purrs.
