Time is measured not by light alone, but in the shadows of our lives...

I.

A dove perches by the sundial
Outside our kitchen window.
The gnomon’s shadow shows
Sometime between two and three.
But what does a dove know of time?
That every day, every season
Takes its time and then is gone.
That it’s time to hatch, to fledge,
To mate, to build a nest, to brood.
And that this year’s nestlings,
If all—-whatever “all” is-—goes well,
Will live on, too, in their own time.
Most of all, the dove does know
That it's always time, always time
To eat, and, if possible, to avoid,
Becoming food for another:
A red-tailed hawk has seen the dove
And has already tried, no doubt,
Will try again until the end of time,
To snatch the dove into itself;
After all, it must eat to live, too.

II.

A white seabird, dark, dark
Against this blinding midday sun,
Or these massing clouds overhead,
Whose silver-edged glories glow
All the brighter in the dulling
Of our troubling, troubled world,
Or at night, wrapped in darkness,
With our dreams and, yes, our fears,
And, at the end of our own time, oh yes! –-
Who of us can believe it will ever end?
Who of us does not know that it must? -–
Countless shadows will have stretched,
Telling us the truth, this one truth:
That all we can ever know of time
Is that it passes—every day a precious gift—
That, in order to fully illuminate our lives,
In order to see, however dimly, darkly,
We must somehow find our own way
Into the very darkness itself,
See the shadows, not just the light--
These sky-blue shadows upon this snow,
The light upon the dark of these clouds,
This dark pebble ‘neath this river’s sheen,
This ancient footprint, lost, then found
In the shadow on this ancient shore.
Only then, through shadows, will we see,
Truly see what is already precious now,
Amidst the all-surrounding darkness,
Amidst our incomplete but still precious,
Indeed, as the poet tells us,
Our one, this one, precious life.