Heather McHugh

20 August 1948 / San Diego, California

Leaf Litter On Rock Face

Things are not
unmoving (or else what

is ing inside them for?)
The things once-living

fall on the never-living all
the more movingly for the eye

that passes over them.
The wind wells up

to spill a trail
of onces off the nevers,

take opaque from eye
to mind, or near it—

every rocking takes
some leaving to

a stonish spirit.
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