Thinking of Marsilio Ficino at the Frist Hint of Autumn

Thinking of Marsilio Ficino at the Frist Hint of Autumn
By Charles Wright

We yo-yo the Absolute big-time,
Dark little spinning thing.
Still, death is the deeper exile and
Waits for our fancy-
Its business in process, and hiding out, and keeping in touch,
Tenth night in a row of rain,
Black as an owl'e eye,
Thunder and lightning out of the West Virginia mountains lik God's yips
And hotfoots,
trees processional maidens dipping in turn,
Cold front form the north
Pinning our ears back, shorting our breath.

Las nigth and a world away.
This afternoon like a waffle, indented and warm,
Delicious and blue on the tongue,
early September.
Ficino, however, is probably right, the Absolute
Not being an exile but a grace,
And waits for no one,
the way, this aftenoon, the sun
Kindles and plumbs the dogwood berries,
The way the individual necks in the cutting garden
Bow dutifully to what's to come,
The way Orion and the Pleiades

rise up ready to go on.