Twice-Believing Creatures
Crickets sing the word
"ceasing" electronically
in dirt and dry
stalks.
A heavy black beetle turns his
belly
to the cosmos,
plucks with his six feet
at the needles of a darkening
pine bough.
The Magician
dances out of straw. He is Dusk;
he juggles the sun and the moon
and the evening star.
Here and there a
few are alert,
some curious, some thankful--like
the deer,
weary of
swishing horseflies away
from their backsides all day and
hungry
after the heavy
afternoon;--like the raccoon,
waddling off to make a living at the pond's edge;
--and the
tireless child, the old man
who stands near his garden
listening to the corn grow,
and the woman
with her hands folded,
singing out loud to nobody.
They know that
dusk takes today's body
and brings another after an interlude
of dreaming.
They know
nothing of the sort;
they are as dubious as the light
at dusk.
They know the
world to be as new
as the note of a gnat in the ear,
as old
as the lizard's
dry smirk,
a boulder's personality, darkness.
Hans Ostrom, 2013
