It was so dark starlight glowed on the water.
I considered the time the photons crossed.
You know how you know a good thing is
An especially good thing? When its good
Effect on experience never diminishes.
Ordinary good things, like conversion
Ecstasies in tent revivals, passionate sex,
And alcohol are all tête-bêche, Janus-faced,
But the exceptionally good things go in one
Direction, one trend line over time,
Even when the plot scatters a bit in spots.
No matter how often I swam in the Slocan
I never habituated. Not every swim was
As profound. Some lacked the stamina
To reach those better, scarier depths
Where the mere fact of floating floated me,
But there was no gradual tailing down
Into boredom, obligation, or addiction,
Nor when I went into the canyons
And mountains to sit beside small streams.
I couldn't get enough of what never dulled
No matter how the sessions seasoned me.
Last night and this morning, despite
Mistakes, the endlessly looming loom
Of fate slowly toppling on top of me, despite
Daughter's alternations between delight
At playing in muddy water and complaints
At being so cold that this was "the worst
Camping trip ever," then more delight,
Despite shivering through sleepless moon
Hours in the wind-whipped tent as she slept
Snug in her pink cocoon bag with stuffies
Beside me, I found no diminution in the joy
Of an evening in a long valley of bare rocks,
The stream that could devour chuckling
Quietly, no other humans than us in sight,
In earshot, other than the occasional jet
Passing over us, joy in the darkness eyes
Could adjust to enough to pick a way
Around the campsite without lamps, and
Then the slow morning, the one bird
That woke, perfunctory as an alarm clock,
To sing and go silent again, a large world
Full of insignificance and long shadows,
Empty, in the end, of us, of body and brain
That made a world of it for us in the first day
Turning from light to light, relentlessly.
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