11/14/10

Beneath The Cloisters

Today I saw a sight
More exquisite than Man-hattan,
A gift of time
And place
And quiet
And God:

There were four bands of Nature
Set before me in dual dimension,
Distinct in depth
Yet same in stratification:

A coarse and weathered stone wall
Not twenty feet away;

A scarified river face,
Changing texture for current and breeze;

A mantle of tree-covered cliffs
Thick in fall plumage;

And crowning all these,
The sky
In soft hazy blue
Stretched wide in swaths
Of cream-spread clouds.

Four horizons
Met in the moment,
Created a layered quartet
Of balance and peace,
One organic architecture
That only I did see.