Earlier than the sun

and stronger, our need

for comfort in the dark.

Always on time

with its doodle-do and smallgrass recitativo

we take the sun

as given, its shadow-play

of slats on a bed-sheet

(a hot thought

in a hot shade) semaphore

to the blood that knows nothing

of distinctions, dawn

from dusk, May from December. Or

in a deck-chair within sight

of the road,

and of rain-pool and melon-flower,

what sunlight

is to old bones.