Late February
Darling, even if we have scarred the earth,
Listen—the owl again in the branches above us
Giving up his position despite the war. And the foxes
Continue to cut the light, the vanishing light and make
Their running in the grass a type of grass
Growing up into a green grain the eye can eat.
The eye can eat the fox and acorns
Wedging themselves in the brown wounds of the Earth.
And the brush of grass against the lowering
Roof of the evening. The eye can eat the vanishing light
Which is returning darker, darker still, returning
Not as mutilated or as an executioner
Might return to his instruments of execution
But light returning as feather, as a feather lost
From a thrush chased by a hawk, the feather
Not returning to the wing, which is beyond escape,
Lost to where the hawk severed it, but the feather,
The feather returning to some power,
Returning to the wind when in a puddle the wind
Blows and scatters its power across the water,
And the feather lifts, not out of the water, but lifts
Along its edge because the feather, in wing or out
Is feather—obeys itself—the way light straying
Will vanish and return not as its vanishing, as scar,
As totem of its former life but returns as it is now:
You in gold sandals and the graves of the executed
Only partially open for seed and water and blood.
***
Author photograph by Ana Schwartz
