Long After

A break in the clouds spills a quick shimmer-

slivers of light that lick the river: white

puckers, coins, bits of crumpled foil, glimmers

too bright to look at long, or else a flight

of silver birds, their flickering wings. How

you define space, inhabit it: blue light

breaks behind the alders. How your faint glow

makes this world knowable again: the sleight

of hand of light and dew working against

each other on the grass: sprinkling half-moons,

sparks, glister, glisten, a glissando longed

for long after it's gone, known only in its

moving, moving away. Too soon, too soon,

the silver birds call, as if somehow wronged.