IN ENDCLIFFE PARK

IN ENDCLIFFE PARK

IN ENDCLIFFE PARK

A speck of dust no weightier than a thought
must have touched dead water.
I did not see what started it, but watch the ring
expand as though the pool is shaping O!
while I stand with the same exclamation
widening through me —

Could the Porter Brook, this autumn park,
the fallen and the falling leaves,
this calm pool and the weir beyond, the onrush
to Stinky Bob steaming on his bench in the sun,
all the snags and graces with which things go downhill,
be best regarded not as material
but one long, complex thought of Autumn
on this sector of the planet in its circuit round the sun,
a beat in that catchy theme
The Way Things Are?

And, more usefully, as I watch that circle spread
and these words begin enlarging on a momentary calm,
might we consider what arises in our minds
as nothing other than water, sky, trees, seasons,
and we who see ourselves as moving through the world
are better seen as receptacles, hosts
of the being that moves through us,
the pool in which its dust is registered and spread?