It Was So Awakening

It was so awakening
in the fragile returning sun for him, I knew.
The detail of the dazzling shallow running water 
and the sand and shell beneath, I saw,
and the thrilling of his senses
in his  intimate examination of the marsh grass
warm, and rich with heady odors of the thaw
was also mine. 

How the unfamiliar brightness remembers for us
the rapture of the small,  
the focus down to these few early blades
and the pebbles in the stunning newborn light
and the staggering ants that crawl beneath,
new citizens of a rediscovered world,
too dazed, like us, to more than stand and breathe.

March 2 2012