background image
in plain air 169
on the roof, the sense of this change
belonging with the sense that comes
when an animal one has been watching --
say a bear, soaking himself in a creek --
suddenly & calmly changes position --
when on the window ledge
a series of drops begins falling,
starting up an excited little
local tempo, and then, oddly, slows down
and at last stops while the heavy rain
continues
... and leaving, then,
for that fi rst companion
of your mere existence (before
you established relations even
with yourself, or your human mother)
the immense brood-beast
the natural universe, where
for instance Homer's `dark earth
and starry sky and strong-running ocean'
are a corpuscle eddying --
not
to be home any more,
with a consciousness like the house
built joist and stud and rafter
in time, in human lengths, not
to pause even at the nestling
of chemical to chemical,
but entering those subtle barrens
where billionths of seconds go,
under the whole show
(leptosome to the last!),
into the sheer and clear
orderliness of chance