At Breakfast

The rising sun, which breaks across the sheaves,

Adds liquid gold to grain, and shatters dew

To steam, which rising curls about the eaves,

Whom from the sun receive old shadows new.

To greet the light, attendants in the leaves

Shift feathers, stretch their beaks, these first, the few

Cast arcing notes which tie around the place:

The net binds sound to sunlight's hues to space.

The piercing dart of voices sweet with strains

Adds some sharp edge to sunlight, steals some grace

And renders beams as slanting window panes

Which trawl about the lawn and on one's face,

So as the nested, human slumber wanes,

But light can sooner add than does erase.

It raises colour, sound, shadows with bright

Lines rigid, soft and warm, destroying night.

An ant among the depths of grasses cool,

On soil not yet made dry by morning's light,

With drive through towering blades reaches a pool,

Whose gentle ripples multiply one's sight.

The ripple's ridge reflects as fluid jewel:

Emerald grass, a bellflower's tanzanite,

The hill across flooded with garnet beads:

The ants at home go work among the reeds.

This all invisible, a table dressed

With bowls, one filled with pomegranate seeds,

Provides, and leaving Nature quite suppressed,

Its order rivals hers to meet our needs.

Bananas posted far, to here addressed,

The wheat for bread well-sprayed is free of weeds.

Now we, immured, unconscious of the leas,

While taking breakfast babble, while the creatures do in trees.

2025