CAKE WALK

Invisible, inaudible things,

Always something to hanker for,

                                                       since everything’s that’s written

Hankers alongside with them,

The great blue heron immobile and neck-torqued on the fence post,

A negative pull from the sun-swept upper meadow …

Eleven deer in a Mark Morris dance of happiness

Are lighter than light, though heavier

                                                          if you blink more than once.

There’s light, we learn, and there’s Light.

To do what you have to do—unrecognized—and for no one.

The language in that is small,

                                                    sewn just under your skin.

The germs of stars infect us.

The heron pivots, stretches his neck.

He hears what we do not hear,

                                                     he sees what we’re missing.

The deer walk out the last ledge of sunlight, one by one.