Still

 by Archie Randolph Ammons

Winter Scene 

There is now not a single

leaf on the cherry tree:

except when the jay

plummets in, lights, and,

in pure clarity, squalls:

then every branch

quivers and

breaks out in blue leaves. 

Weathering 

A day without rain is like

a day without sunshine 

Rivulose 

You think the ridge hills flowing, breaking

with ups and downs will, though,

building constancy into the black foreground

for each sunset, hold on to you, if dreams

wander, give reality recurrence enough to keep

an image clear, but then you realize, time

going on, that time's residual like the last

ice age's cool still in the rocks, averaged

maybe with the cool of the age before, that

not only are you not being held onto but where

else could time do so well without you,

what is your time where so much time is saved? 

Still 

I said I will find what is lowly

and put the roots of my identity

down there:

each day I'll wake up

and find the lowly nearby,

a handy focus and reminder,

a ready measure of my significance,

the voice by which I would be heard,

the wills, the kinds of selfishness

I could

freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,

I can find nothing

to give myself to:

everything is

magnificent with existence, is in 

surfeit of glory:

nothing is diminished,

nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:

ah, underneath,

a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:

I looked at it closely

and said this can be my habitat: but

nestling in I

found

below the brown exterior

green mechanisms beyond the intellect

awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:

I found a beggar:

he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying

him any attention: everybody went on by:

I nestled in and found his life:

there, love shook his body like a devastation:

I said

though I have looked everywhere

I can find nothing lowly

in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,

transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,

stood in wonder:

moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent

with being!