The only difference between water and sky
Is the horizontal line dividing the way
The eye of the whirligig beetle floating at mid-lake
Sees both at once from above and below.
The sole difference between morning and dusk
Is the boreal owl flying out and the boreal owl
Flying back, crying in two directions the only sound
Of before and after.
The one cause of the one distinction existing
Between sleep and a green hillside of afternoon
Is the movement of blade and stem awake
In the alert eyes of the white cat oblivious
To the slumber of the grassy slope.
What the moon and the caribou have always
Held in common is the hoof-marked light
Of the night snow openly listing
Their essential differences.
The proof of simultaneity in the descending
Bone of the redfin’s shadow and the thrusting sun
Of the redfin’s spine is the blind man professing
At once to have knowledge of neither.
All that keeps summer and god
From being continuously synonomous
Is the break of the potter wasp proclaiming,
Through smoky stigmas, striped thorax and dotted pedicel,
The winged details of the location and moment
Where the two become one.
The invisible fact forever dividing spirit
And flesh is the lasting union discovered
When each fully perceives itself
As the creation of the other.
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