A tiny creature moves
through the tide pool, holding up
its little fortress foretelling
our tragedies; another clamps
itself down to the stone. A sea anemone
sucks at my finger, mildly, I can just
feel it, though it may mean to kill—no,
it might say to receive of me
more life.  All these creatures
even half made of stone seem to thrill
to altered existences. As do we ourselves,
who advance so far, then stop, then creep
a little, stop , gasp—breath
is the bright shell
of the life encasing us—gasp
it all in again, on seeing that 
any time would be OK
to disappear back into all things—as when
lovers wake up at night and see
tears in each other’s eyes and think. Yes,
but it doesn’t matter, already
we will have lived forever. Yes,
if we could do that: separate out
time from happiness, skim off
the molecules scattered
throughout our flesh that remember, 
fling them at non-conscious things,
who may always have craved them. . . It’s funny,
I seem actually to remember one certain
quart of milk that has just finished 
clinking against one of its brethren
in the milkman’s great hand and stands,
freeing itself from itself, on the rotting
doorstep in Pawtucket circa 1932, then it is
picked up and taken indoors
by one in whom time hasn’t yet 
woven all its tangles.  The bottle 
will have shattered by now
in the decay of its music.  And now,
by the tide pool, a sea eagle rings
its glass voice down into the sea
the sea’s creatures transfigure over and over.
Around us the meantime is already overflowing.
Whenever I turn its almost-invisibility
Streams and sparkles over everything.