Mercy

The inscrutable face of the god
Who has neither face nor divinity
Peers from the clinquant surface

Of a lake in a late autumn sun.
Nothing belated about that glance
From the hard world into the dark

Heart of the mind without one thought
Capable of diminishing the glare
Reflected from the shrug of the god

Who tosses the mane of the world, which is
Why the mind welcomes and retreats in the face
Of its own confusion from that look.

And yet, nonetheless, but still
Stammers the songbird on the bare
Branch of the tree near the lake's edge,

Out of that emotionless shimmering,
That sum of too many minuscule waves,
From above and below and across

Comes occasionally a mercy,
The appearance of a mist, gentle
Rain from heaven evaporating

On contact with the certainty
That it was not meant to be,
Was too kind, too generous, and yet,

Nonetheless, but still, it is.
It has taken its place in the happening,
This wink of the shield-bright countenance.