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after you buried it—
    a single red feather
            on the window glass
    Â 
in the middle of your reflection.

On Happiness
To see a flash of silver—
    pale undersides of the maple leaves
catching light—quick movement
    at the edge of thought,
            is to be pulled back
to that morning, to the river where it flashes still:
                      a single fish
breaking the water’s surface,
    the almost-caught taunting our lines
            until we give up, at last, and turn
the boat toward home; is
    to see it clearly: the salmon
                      rolling, showing me
a glimpse of the unattainable—happiness
    I would give my father if I could;
            and then is to recall the permit
he paid for that morning, see it
            creased in my back pocket—how
he’d handed it to me
    and I’d tucked it there, as if
                      a guarantee.

Vespertina Cognitio
. . . the knowledge of man is an evening knowledge . . .
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
—Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Nature
    Â 
Overhead, pelicans glide in threes—
    their shadows across the sand
            dark thoughts crossing the mind.
    Â 
Beyond the fringe of coast, shrimpers
    hoist their nets, weighing the harvest
            against the day’s losses. Light waning,
    Â 
concentration is a lone gull
    circling what’s thrown back. Debris
            weights the trawl like stones.
    Â 
All day, this dredging—beneath the tug
    of waves: rhythm of what goes out,
            comes back, comes back, comes back.

Illumination
Always    there is something more to know
    what lingers    at the edge of thought
awaiting illumination    as in
    this secondhand book    full
of annotations    daring the margins in pencil
a light stroke as if
    the writer of these small replies
meant not to leave them    forever
    meant to erase
evidence of this private interaction
    Here    a passage underlined    there
a single star on the page
    as in a night sky    cloud-swept and hazy
where only the brightest appears
    a tiny spark    I follow
its coded message    try to read in it
the direction of the solitary mind
    that thought to pencil in
a jagged arrow    It
    is a bolt of lightning
where it strikes
    I read the line over and over
as if I might discern
    the little fires set
the flames of an idea    licking the page
how knowledge burns    Beyond
    the exclamation point
its thin agreement    angle of surprise
there are questions    the word
why
So much is left
    untold    Between
the printed words    and the self-conscious scrawl
    between    what is said and not
white space framing the story
    the way the past    unwritten
eludes us    So much
    is implication    the afterimage
of measured