There is lifting and lulling, circle after circle,
dark birds, a flying eddy
of loud, inch-wide mouths.
The day thins and slips past
in a sky the color of eels.

I never knew I loved the repetition,
the road, curve upon curve,
joint of stillness and motion.
The world is windmill, turning and oblique.
It rattles many panes of grey.

The small, live things are thick
that fall around and through the sun and stone,
nudging the momentum and the rolling.
The traveling edge inhabits us but doesn’t see. It almost calms
with its distance and indifference, its hum of rods and wheels.

I never knew I loved the weight,
graze of black stones at the roadside,
revolving sun that stains with light and heat,
passes and passes again, laying the dark glaze,
the years, heavy upon heavy.

I never knew I loved so many,
their unseen falling, light upon lost light.
The white sum held up without hands.
A storm to be read later, with dreams and heat
and the memory of many palms.

Patricia Nelson is a retired environmental attorney now devoting her time to poetry and environmental boards. She works with the “Activists,” a group of poets.