White Jade Noon, Green Dusk

If you’re like me, you might like
Days like these—bare, bone-dry, spare,
So swept clean of chores they’re blank—

To go on or to come back,
At least, more and more and more—
The blue air and the faint wind,

The dawn-star chill that leads in
To green and then the white jade
Of noon, the sweat in the shade,

The hum of life through its lives,
Which you know are hard and cruel,
But not, not just now, for you.

If you’re like me, you might ask
The light why its pulse feels still
And curved, a hand like a clock’s

But with no sure beat to it,
Like a clock that casts a spell
So it can’t be seen to move.

If you feel you must know, you
Can turn and ask the last gleams,
But the last gleams grow more dim.