(1) Abele
Is light from over?
No, it is I
seeing the leaf from under,
I who stammer it is,
say it is white in the wind.
I who am here
to see it in falling:
turning and over in wind.
If my hands weren’t here
no one would feel
the edge, no one speak of a vein
that glows within.
Here in the falling
I speak for the leaf,
name it in turning and over,
over and over in wind.
(2) Remnant
Light is what is left –
what is!
What stays above the rock
at the water’s passing,
not of any color
but keeping color and all
in a rainbow’s spray,
a peacock’s fan,
showing each drop
as a round of the many,
one of the manying reaches
of light’s ever-widening hand.
Each is a mirror,
each is a member of me,
showing a way that I came,
gleam of the river I am.
--Lloyd Haft (from Formosa