Ensconced

For a moment I sat beside a small wood stove
which had stood many months unfired in the shade of a room
whose only light came square framed in turquoise
from seven Black Eyed Susans rocking on long stems visited by bees.

That moment still hung in first light of the next morning
easing like an otter into cold waters where the Sun rose and set
without passage of time between the far shores of coming and going
lingering still while the Moon and its reflection in calm water shone

two brilliant blind eyes over an echo of a loon calling out from dead quiet
Even now, left with words I can never possess
words caught in the hollow of a mouth that can claim no hope of speech
having lived beyond speech for days in the simple labor of moving

from one place to another not to arrive but to continually emerge
from forest to field to ridge where I came upon a crow calling
a weighty shadow inhabiting a high roost—
an aspen beyond age clinging to stone.

Long after the Sun was carried
beyond the west ridge and hidden in cool shadows,
and the Black Eyed Susans have curled,
and the sweetness of pollen taken

into hives, hidden in capsules, and sealed in wax,
time has ensconced that moment in the labyrinth of past
where it has ceased and been refashioned into an indelible photograph
my eyes still claim as mine.