​Imagine one day you were in a coccoon,
You were going to lose your mind
You so terrified you sweated,
You saw, but you were blind,

And then, the brown twig, every
Nerve coursing through you, 
The cloud, the earth, a wind,
The blazing of yellow white through

Thin leaves, a sweep of love,
A reverberation without an end,
A beetle the color of coral red,
You cease, the chirping, the bramble blend.

​The light itself, the way
It rises from the Ground
Of Everything, isn’t made,
Doesn’t make, whereas we are bound

In knots of thoughts. To talk
Of cause and effect in
The—eh?—beyond our thoughts
Is a no-plane in a tailspin.

But once we have established
Our base upon the bight,
We see mirrored in the glass
The blue waves, the scudded white,

And we indeed rise to where
Everything is hidden, has a glow
From a light that has no end
Reflected on us in the tender snow. 

​Here is a light. It shines on--
No, it shines in, or through, or
With, or carries the valise of
Every atom through the corridor.

The nurse feeds, the teacher engages,
The nanny folds the sheets, 
Mother holds their hands, father
Tells them stand in line, the streets

Are filled with them, filing along,
There is no nurse or teacher, nanny,
Mother or father, only a sun
Or moon blurry, uncanny,

But not them either, because
The light is there, but—here--
But—at any rate, it blazes
Or simmers into dimness, mere

Smokiness, as you twiddle with
The knob: and let the current flow,
Walk into the office, strike 
The desk. “This is to let you know:

“The trucks will travel the straightest
Route, we’ll employ a clean accountant,
The computers will zip, the ionized
Air will clear the mood of the diffident.”

And the continent with lines of light
Will shine from mountain to shore,
The possum will trace its way, 
And silence will soak the sycamore.

​Let’s dive into the magic
Of this world, let’s ignore
The skyscrapers, the enchanting
Wide-winged hawks, the door

Is open to a chaos in which
The roads have been snatched away,
And sky and land flee each other,
And the sea recedes from the bay.

​This script it has a cosmic ring
It appears in the heron’s eyes,
It stitches together sea and sky,
In the same way that it first entered size

And form, as it came from the hidden
Box, that was not a box, that floated
Before the unseen source, 2,000 years
Before any atom was denoted,

It is the secret of space, it
Describes the curve of force,
It is the terminal, it comes
To Grand Central Station, it is the morse

Code that tells the time, that signifies
The schedule, the tracks through
Blinding snow, the wind that lifts 
The driving sheets of flakes, the clue

To a greater script that is no script
But infinitely winds and is no
Road, a silent, white hot burst,
A secret galaxy, a silent echo of vertigo.

​It is all quite remarkable. Your hand
Moves and the air responds. The air 
Moves it is your hand. The ants
Crawl in a line, and the celestial Bear

Circles above the wind. And the forest
Blesses you, the snow sifting through
The trees. The silence, almost silence,
The shadows black, almost blue,

A silence birthing silence, a season
Birthing years, a dizzying night,
Car lights red and white, and
The secrets of an iron-nickel meteorite.

​You see every brick, you see the traces
Of the men who brought the bricks, of the men
Who laid them, of the men who paid for them,
You see the clay and shale flaking when

A forest once stood here, your senses
Sense what cannot be sensed, they are
Brilliant, they trace the invisible tale,
The celebration, the memoir

Of the source of the source. Antibodies
Run through your veins, enzymes
Until you tingle, your feet feel
The layers of the earth, all times

Are merely a map, until
You are the locus of the planet,
Until you are the seed of the seed,
The red that suffuses the pomegranate.

​It is everything. It is 
The swinging of the planet, it is
Its faith in its track, it is
The churning foam of space, the fizz

Of rules that point at everywhere
Invisible, the spring of being
And the dancing quark, and how
They bend together, blend, agreeing

With a will that generates 
A cubic inch of space, some light
Or dark matter, some hydrogen,
Amino acid riding on the night

Side of some misshapen rock,
And every asteroid finds its place,
The island universe, each blur
A galaxy, spinning in its space.

​The stream no longer feeds the pool
The rain does not fall the lightning
Has ceased, the whole forest is black,
The land is dim, the birds don’t sing

At dawn, the rats overrun the field,
The beavers are confused, they do not
Build, eggs do not hatch, vines
Pull down trees, the mushrooms rot,

Lead leaches into the water, animals
Stagger, a man comes along, understands
Nothing, stamps his feet, waves 
His spear, curses, waves his hands,

Lives on mushrooms, rips bark
From the trees, throws it to
The ground, a wildcat snarls,
Lopes into the woods, through

The mud, but those who were driven away
Will return, the hostile tribes decay,
Then, in the light of a returning sun
I shall speak and tell the night and the day.

​Far, far from the light of the sun,
In the rainforest, the spider
Eyes gleam, the bird is devoured,
The raindrops splash beside her,

The men walk in the dark,
The night blackness roll and swell,
Fear, trembling, lifted spears,
And rage that nothing can dispel,

The slipper orchid is devoured,
The coati half-eaten at its lair,
The liana vines choke the tree,
The curare dangles in the air,

Everything is black, lumps,
Mistaken trees, deviant limbs,
Sizzling rage and shame,
The air gray, the universe dims,

And the flower that smells like rotted flesh
Crouches on the fallen tree.
The kapok and the harpy eagle
Rise clear above the canopy.