Penumbrae

The shadows have their seasons, too.

The feathery web the budding maples

cast down upon the sullen lawn

bears but a faint relation to

high summer's umbrageous weight

and tunnellike continuum—

black leached from green, deep pools

wherein a globe of gnats revolves

as airy as an astrolabe.

The thinning shade of autumn is

an inherited Oriental,

red worn to pink, nap worn to thread.

Shadows on snow look blue. The skier,

exultant at the summit, sees his poles

elongate toward the valley: thus

each blade of grass projects another

opposite the sun, and in marshes

the mesh is infinite,

as the winged eclipse an eagle in flight

drags across the desert floor

is infinitesimal.

And shadows on water!—

the beech bough bent to the speckled lake

where silt motes flicker gold,

or the steel dock underslung

with a submarine that trembles,

its ladder stiffened by air.

And loveliest, because least looked-for,

gray on gray, the stripes

the pearl-white winter sun

hung low beneath the leafless wood

draws out from trunk to trunk across the road

like a stairway that does not rise.