A Morning
A dog surroundingly howls.
Painfully he is changing
His voice from a voice for the moon
To the voice he has for the sun.
I stoop, and my hands are shining;
I have picked up a piece of the sea
To feel how a tall girl has swum
Yesterday in it too deeply,
And, below the light, has become
More naked than Eve in the garden.
I drop her strange body on the cobbles.
My hands are shining with fever,
And I understand
The long, changing word of the dog
With the moon dying out in his voice,
And the pain when the sun came up
For the first time on angel-shut gates,
In its rays set closer than teeth.
—James Dickey
—found in Summons