Dawn

Without abruptness the eyeless dark,
edged only in mists over mountains,
pulls on another wet December morning.
Without awakening the day begins.

A cat sleeps under the house, and a dog
sighs from a dream, and the cows stare and chew;
a clump of scrub oak sleep tangled like lovers,
and the pale grass slumbers in its bed of dew.

The red and yellow leaves scattered across
the marshland that was a yard are drowning,
and the black tree bark is smeared, and the moss
clinging to the roof of the barn is dripping green.

The air, separating itself from the sky,
illuminates without a source or boundaries:
everything is diffuse and pours into
everything else like the meeting of two seas.

And the sun, pretending to be absolute,
is everywhere without being available,
while the rain with its little, inundated voice
whispers: where are you, where are you my soul?