Lighter Than Light

 In our meadow, with velvet antlers. JHH

Tonight's poem is from our new US poet laureate's new book. I am particularly fond of the reference to Mark Morris, whose dances are fresh and inventive, plus often outrageous.


CAKE WALK

Invisible, inaudible things,
Always something to hanker for,
                                                since everything's that's
        written
Hankers alongside with them,
The great blue heron immobile and neck-torqued on the
         fence post,
A negative pull from the sun-swept upper meadow . . .
Eleven deer in a Mark Morris dance of happiness
Are lighter than light, though heavier
                                                    if you blink more than
        once.
There's light, we learn, and there's Light.

To do what you have to do---unrecognized---and for no
        one.
The language in that is small,
                                             sewn just under your skin.
The germs of stars infect us.
The heron pivots, stretches his neck.
He hears what we do not hear, 
                                              he sees what we're missing.
The deer walk out the last ledge of sunlight, one by one.

Charles Wright, from Caribou: Poems, 
FSG, 2014. (Kindle Edition page 4.

Fawn with wildflowers, Emmet County, Michigan. jhh

I think the poem is arranged this way on the page, and I like the little SHOT of emphasis the words that have fallen over the edge get, but I haven't seen them in the print edition.