Even now, with all else frozen in place,
Barren and brittle as the crust of frost,
From some primeval depth still warm
With the first fire that forged this ground
And thrust it up from all that was water,
This risen spring trickling and rippling
Between two mossy rocks and falling
Without a sound down a narrow furrow
Over oak leaves frosted hard as fossils,

And where the bank declines and widens
Becomes an undulant runnel that makes
A sibilant sighing as it lips over the edge
And licks against pebbles and a branch
Held half in and half out of what becomes
A shimmer of deepening water and mist,
Rivulets rushing and glinting in gray light,

Light held motionless in frothing stream-fall.
There is no other sound, nothing moving
But the rustling of the revenant water.

But just once to see this as a painter must,
Not as each image but the whole landscape,
How the light is not reflected but released.
How to stay and say, not with lines of words
But layer upon layer of earth's own colors
The shimmering of the sun behind singed
Ashy clouds curling at the edges like the bark
Of these birches leaning over the water;
Here where each moment flows into the next
To frame forever what words cannot keep.