Guidelines

To learn how to come and to go,

startle hundreds of finches off a snowfield.

Watch their wing-cloud swirl up, thicken, flare open,

wide open, and away, like so many blown leaves.

Then carry on, rising hours uphill, seeing no one,

seeing not one fellow creature all day,

the better to love them.

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Admire the idleness and power

given off by great boulders lying still in the sun,

up where high rivers come running

all summer, past florid spikes of wild purple

risen from muck, elephantella, burning daylight

and water like sparklers.

Under licks of bright fog whose moon flounders

through cloud, zip the tent shut-then waken

from all night rain while sunlight

floats up into fir seedlings, each needle

a droplet of fire. Yet consider how easily-

and in that very dawn-an ant's shadow, its blur

trickling over bare log, might touch

everything you contain.

Look through a foot and a half of clear stream,

into a minnow's semi-transparency-the tiny heart pulsing,

pulsing-over creek bottom where mountains

come down, no profile taller than sand.

Passing ruddy, animal stones

admit the near distance in matter

and feel an immaculate dark, filling its own eyes

through yours, backing each atom, keeping each particle

pure, keeping the firestorms bright, out there

where nothing goes further.

Pause a long moment. Let your gaze enter and dwell

on the torn sky of a ridgeline-as if catching sight

of yourself, stopped at a waterfall,

lost in translation.