Shuttle

Sky answers lake with light and lake,
sky, with a white and blue light

that fountains up through itself, wild and still. 
Trembling between origin and origin

thought sheds its language skin
and the old I thins

into blades of seeing. Now the air 
grows tunneled, now the sky diminishes,

stones deepen on the shore, six birds
settle in the crowns of the cedars,

herons, their eyes like burned buildings, and evening
sifts from their long feathers. The empty ferry

travels forth and back across the lake. 
Its work is its movement, and the groan

of that work settles in the lake, lengthens
to deep resonance. When it arrives

to a chime, the awaited news, 
with chagrin, apologizes.

And so like a moment of professional hope 
the afternoon’s gold findings recede

into the hills behind us. What I want from you tonight 
is hard and strange, a touch containing history, a look to lift

my name away. I want to feel, when your nails score the skin
above my heart, our venal empire

dwindling to dust. I gasp and shiver
toward a dreaming wilderness; above us

great planets slip their arcs
as the small pale stars multiply,

defying the night, doubling it, and defining,
in the stillness their fixed motion makes, to end.