Continuing On

[Lykren]

Think of sand, sand that moves
so cautiously across the Earth in columns
of wind, across the despairing land
so beautifully lit. One’s own thirst is there
in the whiteness of that sun. In the vision
of giant lilies across from the sofa
in a house I do not live in,
in the spring’s reckless rain and into summer’s calm,
somebody tells the story, thinking of the sand
I watched emerge dark from under waves
and grow light again by the easy speech
of that sun. That moon, shifted as it was
to visibility from obscurity, will take you in
just as you thought it would, without foreknowledge
or dread. So it continues and will continue
until you have chased away the last of the leaves
from under your running feet, as a child will do
when wandering through ordinary woods, and finally
is lost.