Eyes in the Grass

A rusty grackle walks the apple’s bough.

He wanders through a green cloth of leaves

With back arched impudently, and pauses,

Plump-bodied and balanced, searching beneath.

There are eyes in the grass,

Eyes lying still beneath stalk and pod where doodles

Drill their earthen cones, and ants march in a forest

Of living swords.

I think that neither the grackle’s black eyes

Nor the ant’s myopic sight has found me here,

Drowned in quivering stems, lost in wattled twigs

Of grass-trees. O I am lost to any wandering view.

I am a hill uncharted, my breathing is the wind.

I am horizon. I am earth’s far end.