OF EARTH

Swallows looping and diving
by the darkening oaks,  the flash
of their white bellies,
the tall grasses gathering last light,
glowing pale gold, silence
overflowing in a shimmer of breeze--
these could have happened
a different way.  The heavy-trunked oaks
might not have branched and branched
and finely re-branched
as if to weave themselves into air.
There is no necessity
that any creature should fly,
that last light should turn
the grasses gold,  that grasses
should exist at all,
or light.
               But a mind thinking so
is a mind wandering from home.
It is not thought that answers
each step of my feet,  to be walking here
in the cool stir of dusk
is no mere possibility,
and I am so stained with the sweet
peculiar loveliness of things
that given God's power to dream worlds
from the dark,  I know
I could only dream Earth--
birds, trees, this field of light
where I and each of us walk once.

     - John Daniel