THE GODS

             return, dust from a bee’s wings, this small brown moth
just landed on my arm, clatter of pebbles in a mountain stream,
whisper of maidenhair fern in a fissure, they enter,
morning light, silk thread on a loom, flash of pigeon nape,
grackle-glint, come from the void’s endless articulation
whose breath’s this bird-call from the high back pasture
where time to time I slip the brokered self for the free world
of worms, swimmers in noon and night’s largesse,
going about their ancient office of turning clods and clumps
to luminous breath, even now as I stand on this bluff
with its wind-turned hawthorn tuned to the sea’s plainsong
as it moves only so much, no more than the moth I hold on my hand.