Our Endless World

You Would Have Loved Today

You would have loved today:sharp winter sunshine, new windows,too cold to take a walk;cardinals in the empty branches,eider ducks on the sound-edge sand.No place to go. Booksopen to their final chapters. Mozartby the fire, lightingour endless world. The housestraightened at last.

North Road

The wind carvesvisions for a walk.Zen wind

blows through us,climbing an unseen path. At the topsky-crashing February,

brown icy leaves underfoot,bare splayed branches,the stunned oaks,

but here a marvelous red cedar—horizontal branches layered, still dark green.

Light through its movingbranches breaks in shadowsthe entire land, the entire sea.

Now sun-defined, a smooth whitedouble beech, a pair ofnaked marble dancers caught together,

Bernini's Apollo and Daphne—paused in their love,heads lost in the Italian clouds.

Last Saturday on Lucy Vincent Beachwe found their kin—fallen from the cliff,

heads down, dried hairlike whispering curly wheat,tangled, glorious—faces

buried in the sand,bodies white, strong, smooth,incipiently agile still.

We sat along their lengthsall afternoon anticipating a fine tide.