Why I Stopped Carrying a Notebbook

I saw so many beautiful things,

and I wrote down none of them.

Not the lone bear cropping 

grass along the inlet’s edge,

not the mist erasing the trees 

on the far side of the glass-flat lake,

not the cedars pulling the sunset down 

the hillside with their netted branches.

I saw all the beautiful things and I stored them

in the front pocket of my mind

to be doled out when the sun beats down unceasing, 

and the mosquitos gather to hum their ache-song.

Then I can be the bear,

grass rough on my tongue;

I can submerge beneath 

the lake’s still surface;

I can sit in the shade of each 

of the trees in turn, one by one by one.