Mary Jo Firth Gillett
If each day we leave behind our living,
each moment racing toward the known unknown
in the certainty that moments have flown
like autumn flocks scared skyward—what grieving,
what beauty can untangle the rough snare
pulling me along in its ropey grip?
What wonder, what wildness poised on the lip
of what might-yet-be, what daydream, what dare
large as the Grand Canyon or Katmandu,
small as Darwin’s beetle or Wilson’s ants,
will rescue time, amber the light that slants
through the rag end of the day, each “now” new
then gone: morning fog in the near marshes,
call of the heron, dew on the rushes.