When a Poem Arrives

When a Poem Arrives,

                                    …we know

from the beginning that the darkness

is beyond us there is no explaining

the dark it is only the light

that we keep feeling the need to account for

                                    The Marfa Lights

                                    W. S. Merwin

All it takes it seems is the slim vein of crow’s

beak grey, her only trace across everything else

that’s fixed in the morning night. It shifts, soon to blue,  

and a wind fingers in, cupped the way swimmers, who learn

early,  find their entry into the wet of it.

And the words as I've heard them these past

few days conceive, in a far away canyon,

a sun undressing herself.  And I’m so anxious

for the show it’s ink and fling and sheets

of rumpled crumpled tight or loose

paper, dry snow on the pine floor.  Why can’t I wait

to know?  Doesn’t she, with all her spice and singe,

need a time when she isn’t penetrating,

or, from here, on this hill, isn't burning with (I imagine it

so) her nude eye, a Medusa of slow blindness.

Though my limbs still work, and my tongue,

Jesus it’s a long way from grey

to blue in this cold sheet of a sky but don’t I

sleepwalk on just the same, not seeing it.  Don’t I.