ceaseless oceans 4

What joy there is in the hoofprints

I find in the snow

From shivering deer who after snuffling

Wet noses for green things have gone back

To a place I do not even know the name for!

How good that the world

Is so much bigger than me.

That birds whose species I do not know

Congregate beyond my sight in the sudden darkness

And warble throaty patterns which I cannot

Put into words. That there is everywhere

Around snow and ice that is melting at an imperceptible

And yet precise, rate regardless of my attention.

What a world—where the fox knows the joy of

Its teeth first splitting across the living skin

Of a rabbit whose heart beats fast from running

And I with rotund belly lean back,

Turn on a lamp, and open a book of stories

Within which are references to the names of men

Who have written thousands of pages I have never read

In a language a thousand years old that I have never spoken.

That the earth continues turning this day is a miracle to me

For I have nothing to do with its turning

Its gravity, spin, and momentum predating all human life.

What a wonder, what luck

That I might explore these soon to be ruins

Alone with but a plastic flashlight and goosedown jacket

That I found in my grandfathers closet.

What joy to walk down to the edge of the water

Where there was once only water

And touch the thistles with cold fingers,

And hear the laughter of ducks and the gurgle of frogs

Where once life had not even been imagined,

But where somehow now the imagination grows

So large its worlds expand beyond all comprehension

And infinite worlds of dreams open

Inside this one hovering about every thing and beyond it

Creating like manifold gods things never thought of.

The holly now stings my cheek,

How hard it is, cartogenic skin

And small, bright berries a mystery to me.

I could live a life transmuting the sun

Into sugar, or counting the minute bits of dust settling

And becoming my grey stone bones, or swirling

Bits of glass in my teeth then spitting them on the beach.

How good it is that the world is huge

And can hold within it

A body such as me

Filled with an illegible sadness.