Vanishing Point

The way an island holds back
water, faith lets us forget
for awhile that everything

we are and have is brief
and less than an isthmus
connecting us to the next

plane. It is a winter afternoon,
and the trees' branches reach
down to touch the snow, to

sample the ground. One
of these syncopations
of weather will startle

the seasons into change, so
don't try to tell time by
scale or fin, the iridescent

motion of the tides.
Everything is heavier than
it appears to be on earth,

and the swans would be
lifted by the slightest wind
into white kites that flare

in the sky against the trees'
branches, were it not
for the miracle of gravity,

which is really sorrow,
keeping us grounded.

Copyright © 2003 Margot Schilpp All rights reserved
from The World's Last Night
Carnegie Mellon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission