William Reed O'Connor

William Reed O'Connor Poems

The Best Poem Of William Reed O'Connor

The Enchantment Of Birds.

Winter green, showing dark in morning haze of fractured warmth
Of tall shadows cast in absence of light upon empty air
Of ephemeral breezes that dusk among bough arched halls
Where light glanced threads stitch the ground and make joyful a prison of twined trees
Who fall in ungainly ranks that dress on, innumerable and innominate
With needles to splinter the clustered light for the specklings of dust that show it off

All is a prelude to the more timid green of spring

Sails of new hope dawning carry each restless stride
From leaf brown shore to moss green isle and on some feral bearing
That tacks its way in the gentle company of ‘nothing much to do' and ‘everything to see'
The passage continues, into the deep green of fir woods
Through sun wrought mists to an end
An end that is not ‘yet' or ‘now' or even ‘soon to be'
And so in looking through the miles of absent time
Between this living slope and that, shown in clearest motion
The perfection of what is

This thing, this all in the enchantment of birds

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