Shadows and light
crossing the fields this morning
fills me with abundance. Although
ethereal, moving through
the je’n sais quoi
of slanting light and rolling hills
offers resilience through this land
of sacred geometries,
what is and is not, what is there
and then not there, in perpetual
movement, from one moment
to the next, changing
in such oscillations through
what we know as time, but
in all verity, the dewy present
is sent shimmering beyond
the sun’s glare above the curve
of bent grasses, in all that ever is.
Wally Swist’s books include Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love, selected by Yusef Komunyakaa as co-winner in the 2011 Crab Orchard Series; and A Bird Who Seems to Know Me: Poems Regarding Birds & Nature, winner of the 2018 Ex Ophidia Press Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Commonweal, Rattle, and Transference.
