There the sun was, dying in the abyss,
in a haze of shadow, no sign of resurgence,
cooled, and cooling, slowly, dismally

Lowing of cattle: your voice, to the mind of Virgil,
felt mellifluous, as it does this evening
when a cloud slips off into the dark of the sky,

Here, in the xeroxed panorama on my desk, a man
is crouching slightly in his spacesuit, leaning
forward, hands swung up, as though about to leap.

 To see the yellow-bellied sapsucker suck sap,
to watch the oystercatcher at his catch,
and bluebird, woodcock, dickcissel, blue goose,

Five is the sum of this world figured by the senses,
and the tally of the planets to the naked eye,
four directions with one person wandering at the pivot.

The clock inside the mantid
       egg under the drifted snow,
  the sap clock in the February tree,

Having done compline by hand at the naked breast
with fingertip and ball of thumb, with tongue,

having with tonguetip traced from breastbone