As once on a cliff I found a near-dead
fish; and when, in sudden and blind
fear, I threw her back to the sea
and watched, not yet numb, and heard
her body land heavy on the rock.

As today small tufts of light played
in the air where the morning sun
warmed them, possible worlds
twisting in each other’s eddies,
circling, dancing, no different

than the actual. Not a green demon
out of place on the path, but
two raspberries in place of one,
women instead of men, life.
The broad world felt real

because it is. And the osprey that stepped
lightly off its perch to fall over me,
the lake, the earth no less concrete
than the bark of the tree now felled,
the voice of the child not born.

A leveling of the field, whereby
nothing is changed, no law
altered, no definition recast.
Time rises up, becomes fundamental,
and in becoming ceases to be.

The infinities might seem too great
and finally trivial, but they branch
only to come again together,
as the world chases its own tail,
passing through itself

passing through itself as ripples
from my boat reflect off the shore
to rock me gently the moment
I stop. As once I chose to kiss her,
and still that moment shapes the world.

My other self did not – and his world,
is it more beautiful than this?
As once the earth was a desert island
and still beautiful, and as it will be
again. Seen from here,

again. Seen from here, laws are only
what is and what might be, boundaries
fixed hastily around the edge of all worlds
and drawn tighter in our minds,
loose nets to catch the real.

As the sow in her pen can know only
its rough wooden shape.
I lay on my back and watched the sky
come and go and from nowhere
birds were above me, eagles floating high.

I looked through them as easily
as I didn’t look far enough.
As the morning water reflects
my face as I can’t see it.
As last August’s blackberries exist

wholly independent of those the birds
eat outside my window, which is to say
not at all. And really, all this talk
of worlds, possible, actual, real,
is just another trick

is just another trick to multiply the beauty,
to take what is and what is already
marvelous and elevate it to the point
of miraculous by simple repetition,
again, simple alteration. The simplest

idea: this might as well be that,
ripe tomorrow as today, so why not
both, simultaneous and rich.
Occam’s razor applied and inverted
and applied again. A giving

of depth. The kingfisher flying north
is left unchanged, but this glimpse
of the promise of the possible,
of the other that is not, allows
us to see what surrounds what is.

When does a metaphor grow
too heavy? Two dead fish
as easily as one, decomposition
as growth, pain. As once
I kissed her. The present, the living

is given life by the past, the dead,
so that it too may fall behind, die,
and cease to be. And if we could
step back again, we might see that
even time is just a facet of itself.

As once was once and is now
no less than as once will be.
Time is our explanation, our almighty
rhythm. But think of time the immaterial
and the place of fixity becomes clear.

Or equally the lack of fixity, that lack
which we feel so sharp in the fall
of a star, the moon’s crescent setting,
that lack against which we fight
so strongly that it – the absence,

our pain, the joint struggle –
has come to define us, to shape us
from birth, that first fading
from permanence. As we slipped under
the bridge the night blue heron

was not there in the reeds, was
lifting up through the thick hazed
air, was not there. A ghost
of necessary beauty. The family
of ducks looked no less surprised,

no less humbled than we felt.
That great bird’s blue weight
shifted the world’s focus; possibility
poured through her wings into actuality,
worlds opening, splitting, merging

into one, one world momentarily
doing the work of all, one bird
carrying the beauty, until
she slid between the trees,
out of sight,

out of sight, and time caught her breath.
The pulse resumed. The actual became again
merely normal, the real became again
the perceived, or perhaps the reverse.
And the crabapples now fatten;

the raspberries grow ripe on the bush;
and the goslings are almost grown.
As yesterday we slaughtered the hens;
as tomorrow we leave and others come.
Late summer, and the pace quickens.