June 12, 2022
No one invents an absence:
cadmium yellow, duckweed, the capercaillie
--see how the hand we would name restrains itself
till all our stories end in monochrome;
the path through the meadow
reaching no logical end;
nothing but color: bedstraw and ladies' mantle;
nothing sequential; nothing as chapter and verse.
No one invents the quiet that runs through the grass,
the summer wind, the sky, the meadowlark;
and always the gift of the world, the undecided:
first light and damson blue ad infinitum.
(John Burnside)