• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

The Merwin Conservancy

We tend a garden that speaks to the world.

  • About
    • The Conservancy
    • W.S. Merwin
    • The Home & Garden
    • Staff & Garden Team
    • Directors & Advisors
    • Volunteers
  • Garden
    • Open Garden Days
    • School Visits
    • Artists in the Garden
    • Garden Gallery
  • Fellowships & Residencies
    • Merwin Creative Teaching Fellowship
    • Multidisciplinary Residencies
  • Gatherings
    • Pe‘ahi Stories: Talk Story Gatherings
    • Garden of Verses 2021: Virtual Event
    • The Green Room
    • Memorial Events & Tributes
  • Journal
    • Poems
    • Palms
    • Directorʻs Notes
    • In Good Company
    • News & Events
    • Pe‘ahi Stories
    • Storied Objects
  • The Sitting Room
  • Donate
You are here: Home / Poems / Poem of the Week: Long Afternoon Light

Poem of the Week: Long Afternoon Light

March 14, 2014 By Merwin Conservancy

Small roads written in sleep in the foothills
how long ago and I believed you were lost
with the bronze then deepening in the light
and the shy moss turning to itself holding
its own brightness above the badger’s path
while a single crow sailed west without a sound
we trust without giving it a thoughtmeredith rose
that we will always see it as we see it
once and that what we know is only
a moment of what is ours and will stay
we believe it as the moment slips away
as lengthening shadows merge in the valley
and a window kindles there like a first star
what we see again comes to us in secret

 

W.S. Merwin (The Shadow of Sirius: Copper Canyon Press)

Share this:

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)

Related

Footer

SUBSCRIBE TO MONTHLY UPDATES

Search this Site

LATEST FROM THE JOURNAL

Belonging to Places

“The Other House,” by W.S. Merwin

CONNECT

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Vimeo
  • YouTube

The Merwin Conservancy

P.O. Box 809 
Haiku, HI 96708 
808-579-8876
info@merwinconservancy.org

  • Subscribe
  • Read Our Newsletter
  • Job Opportunities
  • Contact

Copyright © 2022 The Merwin Conservancy · Log in

 

Loading Comments...