All poems begin like this: the difficult
half-light, the trees a faint outline in the sand.
But somewhere there'll be a white gate, waist-
high and latched, and a first pale bird who'll
arrive and make thread-like tracks across the un-
embellished land; no one will know he's come.
And the vague sun might glide up from its depth
unnoticed, and the light just might seep
over the edge of the quiet, nearly-visible
mountains; a cluster of cedar or willow or pine
might be drawn upward before you ─ but slowly,
slowly. And then, if you're lucky, something small
and quick-footed will slip from the low scrub
and scatter the untouched soil. The bird will become
an instant of fierce color deep back on a branch.
And the gate might shift, the latch
lift up. The grasses may quicken around you, and,
as you begin to perceive your place at the edge
of the tentative wood, you might pick out the small
yellow eye in the gold field beside you, might catch
the white stream's unfaltering voice in the trees, the timber
of that singular forest rising from indistinct ground.
P.S. Oops. LIne break problem. The last "three" lines should only be two. "The timber" should be up there on the line above it.