Clouds, darker than those that already veiled the morning sky,
drifted in just before noon, and the world stilled. After a while
a soft rain fell, washing the trees’ swelling buds, and the twigs
and branches and limbs and trunks, and finally the new grass
and the mosses and tiny spring flowers. It stopped about three
and I watched the sun emerge, pale through the clouds,
but giving its light to the sky behind them. Once, long ago,
someone who lived for some time in a woods, where he no doubt
learned the spirits of the trees, looked about him and asked,
“Have you noticed how the light is always perfect?”