A World of Light

A World of Light

1If I close my eyes now, I can still see them
2canopied by the visor of my sunhat:
3three children islanded on a narrow rim
4of earth between the huge crack-willow that
5they squat before, hushed, poised to net a frog,
6and the pond the frog will jump to (it got away)
7a glass its dive will shatter.
8                                    The unbroken image
9pleases my mind's eye with its density,
10such thick crisscross of tree-trunk, earth, and tall grass
11I see no breach, no source for the light that steeps it
12but a blue burning in the pond's green glass.
13The grass withered, the tree blew down, earth caught
14the frog, the children grew. Sky's ice-blue flame
15teased along the wick it would consume.
Publication Notes
Mining for Sun (London, Ontario: Brick Books, 2000): 71.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
Special Copyright

<b>This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of John Reibetanz or the Brick Books permissions department.</b>