Difference, Difference

Gravel path stirred by the rain

fallen hard through the sweetgum trees,

path that leads to the bend

where the trail splits open in air:

Everything is lighted evenly.

It is a queer hour. The difference

between light and shadow

is the jealousy turn in the eye.

The sun is all in the bottle cap

that glints in the silt like a djinn’s brass hilt,

in the way some lea  is frozen unto the air,

some warm leaf heavywet here, and in how, just there:

The strangeness strangely passes.

And evening mounts.

I can’t get the life out of my head.

There is no glamour on this path

but if I return I will find it

in the thought of how I looked for some.

I stoop to look at the veins that sweep

like Latin roots in the satin of things, dream:

The difference between something and nothing,

which is nothing.

The gravel lies on itself like dust lies on water.

No, no, there are no mothers here.

I bend to see it all, the little stones cast-wise.

Things chase themselves away from the mode of things.

I find a quartz, milked clear:

I could not hear its accent if it sang,

no matter how far off it formed.

What dead hand I should feel if I lifted it.