READINGS

I

Sometimes I'll be reading

and come to a description

or a way of looking

I'd thought was mine alone

written by someone I've never met,

perhaps someone long dead,

and the connection forms a bridge

out of myself to guide me back.

II

What Shakespeare was to Larry,

the grasslands were to his father,

a great, subtle text rewarding endless study.

His father had a countryman's eye

for small varieties of landscape.

Larry looked at many places quickly.

His father looked at one place deeply.

Each year the short drive on the dirt road

to the ranch became less of a simple thing.

III

After nightfall

I watch a yellow half moon

suspended above the horizon

before it slips behind the sea

fading light in the starry black sky.

When we look at the heavens,

we see into the past

through time light takes to reach us.