this was the only thing beautiful today

Perceptibility Is a Kind Of Attentiveness by Jane Hamilton

It is not enough
to see only the beauty,
this light
that pools aluminum
in the winter branches of apple—
it is only a sign
of the tree looking out
from the tree,
of the light looking
back at the light
the long-celled attention.
The leaves too,
and the fruit, distract
in their sweetness and rustling.
As snow distracts,
covering the tree’s looking out
with its own,
and the fragrance of blossoms.
Only stripped
of its multiple selves,
its many fabrics of loveliness,
does the tree’s eye
step into a form
we can see with our own,
the black roots twisting down
from the heart,
ours equally whorled,
equally silent,
a flood-swept corridor keeping
no vision but life’s
A mirror look into a mirror,
colorless, plain,
what flows between them
passes like water through a net.
A dragon-palace, but what dragon?
Its flowing scales of emerald,
emerald water;
it roaring rush,
tide-rush of water;
the treasure—oh even the treasure—
treasure of water.