Postcard

I saw a muskrat nose across a pond
nudging the reeds apart without a sound.

I saw a spider touched by a note of sun
shake out its net, bouncing it up and down.

I saw a black snake slipping off the road;
in the doorway, pulsing, a tiny golden toad.

I saw a white owl, baffled by the light
bank silently and sheer off out of sight.

These things took place the day the summer went.
I noted them down, not knowing what they meant

or if anything at all had really happened.
Only a state of mind in which eyes, opened

by solitude, could see the lives that other
creatures made, busy and unperturbed by love

or hate.  I pull the shutters inward, drop the bar
but wind and dark still forage at my door.