morning star

It is tomorrow now

In this black incredible grass.

The mountains with luminous discipline

Are coming out of the blackness

To take their places one in front of the other.

I know where you are and where the river is.

You are near enough to be a far horizon.

Your body breathing in a silver edge

Of a long black mountain and the morning star.

Before we cannot speak again

There will be time to use the morning star

For anything, like brushing it against

A pentstemon,

Or nearly closing the lashes of our lids

As children do to make the star come down.

Or I can say to myself as if I were

A wanderer being asked where he had been

Among the hills: 

“There was a range of mountains

Once I loved until I could not breathe.”

Thomas Hornsby Ferril