Less Than Kind

Still as the shimmer of the light by lakeside,
White like the wind of the horizontal dawn,
Day with the drakes dips in Titian tides,
Flits over on the wings of a shadow's swan.

Something has awoken in the piping reeds
Where the aching bracken wakens with the haze;
The crocus is a chorus; the brightness breeds
With the breaking of a thousand tiny days.

The world is not so much with us. We are its myth,
Tales in the telling on the breath of boundless seas.
We should be careful of each other, tender with
The little lives that rustle in the unseen trees.

Thomas Clark