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tree meditations and others 237
Then down a stony beach
Pouring still crystalline
Among brown sand and stones
To the silent shock of entry
In a fogged, booming ocean,
Grays, grays and muffl
ed whites,
Vague parallels hurrying in,
Creek shooting under, straight in.
the dragon of things
1
Silver Creek isn't silver
but dark, for the water fl ows, clear and shallow,
on a bed of black lava,
that fl owed in its time,
thick and slow, over a sandstone bed that in its time
was slowly drifting sand.
Firs, cedars, and maples
shadow the thin soil that formed in time
upon the lava
-- shadow Silver Creek
(among the shadows the streaks and blobs of light
are silver indeed)....
2
Where the lava fl ow stopped
the stream wore a gorge in the sandstone in time,
over the gorge hangs