Tuesday, May 6, 2008

The sunlight brightens

The sunlight brightens the green
on the leaves of the tree,
and the writer’s mood is uplifted,
nearly imperceptibly, but enough
to remind him that language
is both his morass and his savior,
and that, simply by listening,
he can put one word after another,
or if he were feeling frisky, one word
behind another, and thereby arrive
at a point where something had arisen
by itself, of itself, and for itself,
ever self-arising, ever coming-into-being
of their own accord, the words upon words,
and then, at last, after a long wordless
morning, he can watch his cat duck at
the passing bird flying outside the window,
and see that all perception is skewed,
is total and individual and real,
and that green never was green at all
before he arrived on the scene.