Redshifting Web

 by America's newest POET

LAUREATE

Arthur Sze

#8 of the 9-stanza full-length

poem

I find a rufous hummingbird on the floor

of a greenhouse, sense a redshifting

along the radial string of a web.

You may draw a cloud pattern in cement

setting in a patio, or wake to

sparkling ferns melting on a windowpane.

The struck, plucked, bowed, blown

sounds of the world come and go.

As first light enters a telescope

and one sees light of a star when the star

has vanished, I see a finch at a feeder,

beans germinating in darkness;

a man with a pole pulls yarn out

of an indigo vat, twists and untwists it;

I hear a shout as a child finds Boletus

barrowsii under ponderosa pine;

I see you wearing an onyx-and-gold pin.

In curved space, is a line a circle?