Dear Sam

Dear Sam,

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.

                                                                    Wendell Berry
                                                                    The Sycamore

This is the seamless pass of time—how it trucks

with and in light and water, high river water

after a blast of rain all hurry hurry in the foam.

Hurry hurry on the surface.  And though trout wade

in the shade of a boulder, their gills work

a different fury altogether.  Here it is nearly

near the end of May.  The lilacs are bursting 

out with their mute purples, the birds are plugging

their babies jaws with grubs and necks of worms.  It is 

this slip from one cloud embryo to the next that's kinda

like hammock watching.  Ever lay on your back

on a hammock?  How after that initial thrill/terror

that something’s gonna give it all settles into

a pouch of netted tension and then, once it’s at

least trussed to the weight of your arms

and legs, your face is up and under the most glorious

canopy of blues.  Or suppose it’s anchored between

two trees, that hammock, and you see

oak leaves or maple leaves, or, screws bolted

to any hardwood tree, that sort of canopy.  And

then, settled, you give yourself permission to just

watch and make shapes and feel absolutely ok

that those shapes, pushed by the wind, merge

and change and create fantastic beasts

or form crosses or moons or some Japanese

character for oh who the hell would know

but those who read Japanese—and all the while

you watch from your hammock under

the tree, under the sky, the way it all goes by

but always comes back around too—just in case

you dozed a little or full-out slept—it all comes back:

the leaf of it has only drifted while you’re distracted

and it’s green and waxy, and it’s a gleam beam

you see and are glad to see.  I’ve had moments like

these, but only alone and never in a hammock.  I think I would

like to have a quiet lie-in in such suspension.  I think, too,

after all that green and blue, after the brief sleep,

I’d like a velveteen mist to glimpse what I’d brought out

to think about, to polish it like rivers gone to summer's

reduction, slow, and quiet, the way the trout we protect

are quiet, how we know they are there but we never cast

our fly by.  To keep it and know something profound

rests there while all the clouds open into days.  To be at the end

of this May and gaze in the calmer pools and not go

all wonky in the faster goings on, too fast to even

gather bugs or bottles or other stuff floating by.  Like that,

while we rest, suspended, still a few feet above the ground.