Astonishment

Oarlocks knock in the dusk, a rowboat rises

and settles, surges and slides.

Under a great eucalyptus,

a boy and a girl feel around with their feet

for those small flattish stones so perfect

for scudding across the water.

                               *

A dog barks from deep in the silence.

A woodpecker, double-knocking,

keeps time.  I have slept in so many arms.

Consolation? Probably. But too much

consolation may leave one inconsolable.

                               *

The water before us has hardly moved

except in the shallowest breathing places.

For us back then, to live seemed almost to die.

One day a darkness fell between her and me.

When we woke, a hawthorn sprig

stood in the water glass at our bedside.

                                *

There is silence in the beginning.

The life within us grows quiet.

There is little fear. No matter

how all this comes out, from now on

it cannot not exist ever again.

We liked talking our nights away

in words close to the natural language,

which most other animals can still speak.

                                 *

The present pushes back the life of regret.

It draws forward the life of desire.  Soon memory

will have started sticking itself all over us.

We were fashioned from clay in a hurry,

poor throwing may mean it didn't matter

to the makers if their pots cracked.

                                  *

On the mountain tonight the full moon

faces the full sun. Now could be the moment

when we fall apart or we become whole.

Our time seems to be up – I think I even hear it stopping.

Then why have we kept up the singing for so long?

Because that's the sort of determined creature we are.

Before us, our first task is to astonish,

and then, harder by far, to be astonished.

Galway Kinnell