Always the world-spun light casts patterns

raveled through the wind-thrown clouds, the forest's

branch-broken loom, across the hoof-scraped moss

and snow-banks, the backs of browsing mule deer

whose swiveling ears listen for the whispered sound

of the tawny cougar's padding walk. Dark and light,

sleep and wake and dream course through our lives

to make us what we are—sun and shadow-clothed,

bedrock and layers of fertile soil, green climb

and blight of history, wind-taken, time-wound

and wounded, heart-bound to world's warp and weft.