In the clear

Off the crook of the walk
over moss and rotting wood,
snowdrops with their sleeve hearts hung--
denuded forest nook, foot-by:
brief bloom time before they come undone.

Wish dimes cleaned from a pool
their stay that's all absconding;
yet piking winter's midriff
with fiat, down-bowed, chastening, gift.
Fleece on a barb. Glacial traction slipped.

Clasp out of clasp, sap celled
will fish - fervent, rising, sighing
broad wood stories joyful through -
leaf not leaf, but inclemency's oust
above these, when withered and forgotten.

Spread now in the corner,
where fence is broken under eaves
and a turn from meadow to woodland leads:
like the whites of eyes that the eyes will miss,
read aright, amid unthanking drip.

Come near this brevity
and milk of sorrow: the same divested
with the summer swallows, that fletch the breadth
above the grove meadow, when grass goes
slant in brisking heaves, decanting pollen

to the wind that rolls it
like smoke into the chorusing woods,
and lofts of grasshoppers, like hot pieces
thrown from a fire when it snaps,
bound in clicking wakes, through the field's lap:

cannot be topped to be
overtoppled and winnowed accident
that wheats a host, brimmed or bereft;
partaking in the beat, the ill-perceived
palpitation presence, ever present

and near this brevity.