A World of Light

If I close my eyes now, I can still see them

canopied by the visor of my sunhat:

three children islanded on a narrow rim

of earth between the huge crack-willow that

they squat before, hushed, poised to net a frog,

and the pond the frog will jump to (it got away)

a glass its dive will shatter.

The unbroken image

pleases my mind’s eye with its density,

such thick crisscross of tree-trunk, earth, and tall grass

I see no breach, no source for the light that steeps it

but a blue burning in the pond’s green glass.

The grass withered, the tree blew down, earth caught

the frog, the children grew. Sky’s ice-blue flame

teased along the wick it would consume.

Source: Mining for Sun (Brick Books, 2000)