Looking off now, into the burdened light
On the hills, you would never surmise
This brief unplanned passage or crossing.
It is true that the red tailed hawk is hunting
As if nothing is happening, stirring up trouble
With the shadow it casts in the shrubs below.
I need to pay the light bill, and the shining
Of the sun on a teeming planet
Won't change that. But, oh, what a curious
Thing, to be not just alive but aware
Of a cosmic occurrence. Venus in broad day,
Not shining but a shadow like a love interest:
It's not mandatory to find meaning in it.
I don't believe in God, so that shadow
Doesn't fall on me. I am a mere observer.
Observe this. Moaning over the incense
Of disinfectant, some learned gentleman
Dies an omega in a hospital somewhere.
The requisite alpha birth occurs below.
They are separated by concrete and steel
And the shadow that passes over the face
Of the Sun, separated from the infinite
By what they are, and from me by what we
Aren't--a unified people; earthly, aware,
And whole listeners. So there's a lonely
Bitterness in this Venus, this perfect circle
traveling invisible across a fire too bright,
Consulting no charts, charting no course.
But it shows itself to me, and so shows me
My transitory nature in the nature of its transit.
Every life is an ellipsis at any given moment
Until the end, the period of existence.
Allotted to us...There is some flexibility,
Some play. Still...watching the hawk, the hawk still
Hunting, passing like eternity between me
And the Sun, I am to the moment blind.
Here is the story of understanding, that we
See only what we can explain in truths.
This is the mystery of language, the calling
into being of a thing hitherto unknown.
Even now: hitherto, an ancient thing
You perhaps have not heard or spoken
Before, until you see it, here, now. I see
No shadow on the sun, but I know its name,
Feel its terrible indifference to me,
To you, to the hawk, to the very Sun itself.
6.15.2004
