Be merciful to me when you read this:
I am only a poem, something you were
or thought or thought you were
in words God shared with man on the sixth day
because the firmament could not reply
and Satan already knew them
and animals know things
not things that stand for things.
(pick up the soggy paper
with the pink rubber band
before it breaks
and floods the gutter
the card
in the bicycle spokes
sounds more like a lawnmower
than a locust
a black manta ray sails
in a gouache of sky-blue
above three perfect dandelions
crawling with light)
You, image of God, speak
Driving east from Lake Michigan
the oaks were moth-brown,
the sky leeched of color like a Wyeth print
until the sun dropped into the clear
of the horizon’s stripe below the hem of clouds,
a burning dragon’s eye
that overthrew the colorless kingdom
by force of slanted light.
Like torches they went off,
one after one, leaf-edges lit like suns' coronas
of dull rust grown to scarlet flame
then muted to bloody purple
as the sun's stare waned
and the sky melted down
the vision again to brown.
So I thought of Hiroshima's
sudden mushroom of a minor sun
turning the same trick of light
or even the Second Coming
flashing horizonward as predicted,
but neither the folly of man
nor the glory of God
could account for the moment,
so I thought only of earth's tilt
and her consequent seasons
and this season, autumn’s autumn,
obliquely resurrected
in a sheet of failing light.