More Beautiful Differences

A single bird is pulled as needle from blue cloth.
Hills drunk with shimmering green rustle being.
A stream meditates, almost courting seeing.
A figure, hunched over, is a kiss of distance,
Each movement of arm almost embrace of soil.
Three gray boulders are alive, mesmerized stillness.
All movements, non-movement are luminous fact;
Ideas scurry off like mice in light of fact.
I don’t stand here as Canadian, denying fact.
Canada’s a dream; there are people and earth.
I don’t know what I am, but I’m not Jewish;
Being Jewish is yet another dream.
There is seeing now, these hills, figure, stream,
With unknowingness as my only wings.
I don’t embrace such ideas, and so
I don’t encourage division, needless woe.
Is this throwing out too much that is rich?
Is this the end of grand stories we can stitch?
Not so: It’s the beginning of me and you.
The differences that remain shimmer,
Being more beautiful and more deeply true.

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