Poem of the Week

To lighten the language up, or to dark it back down

Becomes the blade edge we totter on.

To say what is true and clean,

                    to say what is secret and underground,

To say the things joy can't requite, and to say them well ...

This is the first conundrum.

The second is like unto it,

                the world is a link and a like:

One falls and all falls.

In this last light from midsummer's week,

                        who knows which way to go?

The great blue heron wheels up the meadow

                        and folds into Basin Creek.

Only the fish know which angle his shadow will make.

And what they know is not what he knows,

Which is neither light nor dark nor joy,

                    but is just is, just is.