Natural Wonders

1.

The old moon lying in the young moon's arms

lives in the shadow of her crescent light

and yet he rounds her out, shields her from harm

as she ripens in the star-encrusted night.

Almost a Tao sign, they embrace with limbs

luminous and stark, wedded by less

but braced by design. The arch is their symbol:

a strength made from two weaknesses.

2.

When lightning strikes a beach, it burns the sand,

turning it to glass, and those who wander

along the shore find shards of frozen fire

like flattened ziggurats - fossil lightning -

which some call "fulgurites," and others know

by names more fanciful or dire, and some think

live inside dragon bones, and still others hold

aloft, to shield their eyes from a sun whose flames

are distant and hotter but kill just the same.

3.

In extreme cold, snow forms as "diamond dust,"

a sun rime I've watched in Antarctic skies

where the surgical wind blows sharp as a scalpel,

the frigid air's too tight to cloud, and yet

moisture ices itself up, cascades and flies

in a continuous shower of spine-tingling sparkle.

Even in winter-waxed New York, flying

through blizzard, often the air's fishbowl clear;

then one can survey from the sky's high shelf

-despite the ice-claws, whirlwinds, and gusts-

and see how the battered earth holds herself

calm in time and place and diamond dust.