Noon light on the jacaranda fans
Colorless sheen,
and distant figures disincarnate
Every so often among the trunks.
Red beards of the eucalyptus pips.
Squall line backing and filling
over the ocean’s floor,
Waves folding and splayed flat.
Three sparrows bob at the feeder, two crows bring down rain.
Rain gone, sun perched on pine limb.
Birds bathe in an ashtray.
Ocean appalled above the kelp beds,
As though softer there.
Up here, glister of water bead,
ants edging the ponds and lakes
Swelling the tabletop.
Here come the crows again, and the doves. Here come the gulls.
The contemplative soul goes out and comes back with marvellous
quickness-
Or bends itself, as it were,
into a circle, Richard of St. Victor says.
Or gathers itself, as it were,
In one place and is fixed there motionless
Like birds in the sky, now to the right, now to the left . . .
There are six kinds of contemplation,
St. Victor adds:
Imagination, and according to imagination only;
Imagination, according to reason; reason
According to imagination;
reason according to reason;
Above, but not beyond reason;
above reason, beyond reason.
First month, third day, 32 degrees.
Overcast afternoon,
cloud cover moving from west to east
As slow as my imagination.
Squirrels flick through the bare branches of oak trees.
Sitting outside is like sitting under the ocean:
The white pines undulate
as though looked at through sea wash:
Some wind ripples by, like a current.
I’d rather be elsewise, like water
hugging the undergrowth,
Uncovering rocks and small windfall
Under the laurel and maple wood.
I’d rather be loose fire
Licking the edges of all things but the absolute
Whose murmur retoggles me.
I’d rather be memory, touching the undersides
Of all I ever touched once in the natural world.
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