Gathering my motley flowers in one bright boast,
Sun or fog or moon filling my eyes,
easy as the laughing of a ghost,
following a cat I know leaps high,
I jump to startle through this almost vast
almost-moment in the burning yellow sky.
Here there was never any fool like — (I
scamper on six live feet towards one coast,
push through time with my rare emptiness,
my steel gray, pale gray courage, to the brink.)
O feather, O rose, O cup. It’s time to guess,
grow out loud still deeper than I shrink,
pull the cliff down through my happiness,
know, know, know much harder than I think.

First published in The Wolf