Another Moment In The Ongoing Development Of Our Hero Poem by Peter Minter

When you walk out
into the derangement of earliest morning,
too early, for the stars
still examine you and trees, unencumbered
by daylight, hang with sorrow
their brevity in moonlight
and the young dawn

When you light up
and look down into the broad circle
of your life, the leaves
corresponding to zones of implosion
and out there, like a storm
in the valley, a city
sparkling off the horizon
and the bromine haze on the coast

And when you stand there,
wait, the silence of the coming
spring as it seeps
beneath your feet then up into air
from all beings,
those knotted branches, roots
and harbours of flesh
calling forward into daylight
another moment of becoming
before relaxing again into common,
ongoing parlance

When you recover, undiminished
and fall again to the wet ground,
half sleeping in an acre of grasses,
the last world of snails
and insects brought closer under the nail
of the final, crescent moon,
unobserved, uncovered
by territories of doubt and attachment,
the pride of not knowing,
not seeing the way.