The Yellow Bird
Some things are too big to see.
We glimpse only the edge of a shadow
passing over the sky or across a wide valley.
Perhaps we hear it in a sudden wisp of silence,
or in a whiff of cloud, or in the whisper
of a scent that can’t quite be placed in memory,
as if a whole universe trembles there
at the brink of becoming and then is gone.
Some small things slip away from our knowing
faster than our knowing can run after them.
A bright yellow bird vanishes into the forest
before I can tell what kind of bird it is.
Oh, how could I not be humble, now,
knowing so well how much I can never know?
kz 2020
Recent Comments