Poem-a-Day

Travelling standing still, I took
Years to do a piece
Of one Pacific Island. Now
Everywhere I look—
As if I stood on top the Pole
And saw surrounding how 
The horizon was travelling
While I was standing still—
The world goes round and round and I 
Am pure content to be
Its tiny axis toward a sky
That points and centers, spinning by,
In an earth that is, with me,
From root’s depth, into tree,
By tiny atoms, back and forth,
Shaken, a round trip out of earth,
To earth’s depth as before.
I could not travel more.

One circle out of earth and back
Takes seventy years at least;
The other goes with mental speed
Around to the level east.
The atom of my mind can look
While it is being taken
Upon an arc the plumed trees look,
Shaken and unshaken.
So the two circles. Momentary
The horizontal one.
And the tall circle, too, the airy
Flight to the flowing sun,
Converge on this, my standing still,
My travelling through space,
Going somewhere, until
I arrive at no place.