by Tom Montag

PLAIN POEMS: MAY 10, 2001

We had rain yesterday, late.
Now there's a blue haziness
of sky, a blazing greenness
of spring, fierce as a river

flooding. You have to wonder
what it means to be alive,
how we come to this motion
when rocks and ocean, soil and

stream - the basic stuff of us -
none of them live as we do.
Or none of them appear to.
For all I know as certain

the world could be the dream of
some gigantic bear napping
after its feast of berries.
We'd be the great bear's dreaming.


Originally published in Wisconsin Poets Calendar