I put out the dimmest light. I, quiet,
closed my eyes. The lupines only I had known
bloomed purple in the meadow
where the oak trees opened
secret ponds of light.
No one knew of them
but I. Now
no one knows of them.
None have seen, down falling slopes
of meadow, where I, walking,
was, the yellow flowers, each
a frazzled end to one green, milky, slender stem.
No one has seen heaven. Yet,
it has been known, and always will be known.
It is the masterpiece
of lupines, parted trees
and silence
no one sees.
In the small space I inhabit, the shape
of a curved hand,
I am there, not deeper
than the surface, the soft earth.
Where will I go,
I thought, under the ground, or no:
A more complicated place where our fixed rules
of elements confused; another world
Or would I simply soften, go to leaf
then back to carbon
Would I become a wild garden-
A seed fell in the woods, grew
un-looked at into bloom,
just a short time used to gather frost.
Some of us, immortal, others not: pinched out,
faced down; the dimmest lights;
a quickly-melting now.
It is we who most depend
that something blest attends us,
placing rain in our small hands, parting
trees for nothing, not to see us:
but to make an unseen and unimportant mood of shade
and light,
remembering
to end us every night.
