Classic Poem

The astonishing eloquence of it—
all those square miles of water
come-on abruptly, at sundown,
where the road rounds a high contour … Flat
as a palette and flaming—
the whole westward arc of it—
with a cold plum color, the east
coves covered in white ice,
and the center black, black as a polar
solstice. I wasn't set
for this sudden vast remission
in the ups and downs of the world. How
could one not succumb
to such level insistence, not
stop cold and consider
the solitary grebe there, its wake,
from a point utterly random
on the flamboyant face of the deep,
widening to include more, more,
and finally all, of the universe?











By permission of the author.