Blue Heron
Calm evening and the watery plain;
before him, the majestic sky
darkens, descends, is still. And I
perceive him fly through his domain
his arms extended in the sky
and moving slowly, while the night,
as if at his command, had lain
a cloak, its substance purple light
about its master as again
he flies above his secret world,
where the evening sun is slain,
where the misted wind is furled.
The Mallards
At Champlain's edge the spume and surf were flung
heavily forward, under a massive rise;
the ferry swam in the mist, and there was hung
a flight of mallards high in the empty skies.
Their note was faint with distance as they sank
beyond my seeing, taking my flying thought,
while I stood, chained to my feet, upon the bank,
the prisoner of myself. But still I caught
a sense of portentous meaning, that they flew
who rose by their own willing. I was left
with restless, foaming surf, as if it knew
how flesh and spirit differ and are reft.
The body is most inhabited when mind
leaves it to seek horizons, unconfined.
Goodbye
I am not metamorphosed out of love
That I perform no further conjurations,
Nor out of seasons either
And their sense experience,
For I have done what love does
And by clear insight sensed
What artifacts I was among,
Love, the world, and the moon:
I have freely used this tentative generation.
No, such cornucopial floods and tides
Are not astringent to my thought,
But I, a geographer, have found another country,
Bare, without loveliness, difficult,
And I am going there with all my measuring tools.
I think to find sustenance on
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