"On a Day in the World."
We had a grief we didn't understand
while standing at the edge of the low scrub hills
as if humans were extra or already gone.
What had been in us before?
A life that asks for mostly wanting freedom to get things
done in order to feel less helpless about the end
of things alone.
When I think of time on Earth, I feel
the angle of gray minutes entering the medium day
is not yet built up.
Our work together, groups, the willing burden
of an old belief, and beyond them,
love, as of a great life going like fast creatures
peeling back marked seeds, old-brown integuments,
the color time will be when we are gone."