Field Guide

Here among the blue hills—

creased, battered, worn,

ground down to earth

and melding into sky,

raked and scrubbed by sun

and the swiftly scudding

shadows of bright clouds—

here among blue hills

I need a field guide to the light:

Ridge Light:  pale blue

tessellations caressing

the sinuous mountain’s spine.

Smoke Light: falls straight down

among the silent shafts of trees;

lights each dust mote rising.

Rain Light: shatters into droplets;

reflects the many colors of the soul.

Print it small on leaves

as thin as gamma rays

yet still its pages, numberless

as stars, would never fit my pocket

as I walk out among the waves

and particles of paradox,

the shards and shimmerings

that so accost the eye—

Brook Light: burnishes alike

the pool, the eddy, the fool’s gold,

and the seaward-running flow.

Light, Species Unknown: 

Emitted by dark mica

and the white moth’s wing at dusk. 

Penetrates the shut lid,

illumining the dream.

Written River Winter 2011