Ginkgo biloba
Under the year’s first snow
the garden’s in hiding.
Its white silhouette
confounds the eye
aching for delight, clarity,
a dark glass it can see
its own fullness in.
The yellow confetti
of ginkgo leaves,
a gesture towards
definition, is oblique
as a Chinese oracle:
a flock of ochre moths
drawn to pinpricks
of frozen light;
notched wings, half-buried,
neither one nor two.
As you look closer,
look like a moth
swooping, and brush
a fingertip through
this blind dazzle
tumbled out of the sky,
you can just make it out,
the miracle, a whole
drift of stars,
six-pointed, twinkling.
From: Reading the Flowers, Arc, 2016.