Nadirs & Zeniths

Nadirs & Zeniths

Sunol Foothills

I walk up the curving road,

past vineyards and paddocks.

The straight, dawn light cuts

through rain-wet trees.

I remember someone I’d just

met the last time I walked here,

long ago. Someone I could barely
see in the glare of the new. 

The morning collapses into contrast: 

chiaroscuros of telephone pole,

shaggy ancient olive trees,

many-handed cacti.

Only far from her zenith can the sun

make such angled work of light.

The question comes,

sudden as a puncture:

Do we choose the wrong one

so we can be right?

All the world briefly

shrinks to this question

before the sun magnifies it.

Shatters it.

                       

I stop beneath an oak. In the bowl

of a field stands a blond mare.

The dawn side of her shines,

the other waits in blue shade.

I decide: sides are for fences.

Brightness does blind.

Beginnings only follow

ends and storms.

But I am willing to be wrong.

I step from the graveled shadow

into the sun. The wise light

hits me with a fist of yes.