I
                    Dawn

The stream lifts from itself in the early light
hanging in a hammock of bare branches.
It does not move away, it does not slide
east or west, does not break
the skeletal banks of branches overarching
the stream. A leaf sways in place on a spider web
like a bone-dry fish hovering in the current
of the risen line of fog which is the stream’s
second self. This the transient knowledge.

                        II
                       Day

All without knowledge is itself in the bright cool
and works steadily at its business like the roots
of trees at the soil, working up through
their bodies what they glean and gathering
as they grow a solid stance for their upsprung
trunks and branches but unknowing those
second selves as they work and the wind
bows the trees and the roots do not know
their work is the buttress for their selves above.

                        III
                   Moonlight

Fog the mountain’s second self
risen from the mountain and in it I
am and my second self is and as the mountain
of mountain I of I am aware—as the body
is known to me so incompletely I am
aware of my second self sporadically
that second body within and throughout
risen now aware I of I in the mountain
as much as on it in the fog of.