Can a terror outlive the eyes
that opened upon it?
The reeds part. The water closes.
A small life holds its breath
under the enormous breathing of another.
Then earth. Then grass.
Then centuries of grass.
Perhaps some depth of us is sediment:
the flight, the famine, the footfall—
each laid down until the weight
has pressed the memory from the fear.
We wake in a quiet house.
Sun on the floorboards.
Something in the blood
is listening for its life.
And what of the first afternoons
when nothing came?
A hundred thousand summers.
The river warm at its edges.
Someone asleep with an open hand.
Insects carrying their little lamps of gold
through the standing light.
Surely these, too, have entered us.
The mouth finding sweetness.
The body beside a body,
loosening its watch.
Children calling from the shallows;
farther off, the long grass
closing where they passed.
Could peace lie down so often
in the flesh
that flesh would learn the way?
Deep in the creature,
a clearing.
The sun has been here before.
It rests its whole weight on the earth
and the earth bears it.
You turn toward the one you love.
For a moment the future
can be approached with bare hands.
Life out of life:
to make a place within your warmth
for someone who has never seen the sun,
and carry them toward it—
the old, bewildering trust
of the flower opening,
of the animal lying down
to let its young climb over it.