For Edwin Wilson

Did wind and wave design the albatross's wing, honed compliances: or is it effrontery to suggest that the wing designed the gales and seas: are we guests here, then, with all the gratitude and soft-walking of the guest: provisions and endurances of riverbeds, mountain shoulders, windings through of tulip poplar, grass, and sweet-frosted foxgrape: are we to come into these and leave them as they are: are the rivers in us, and the slopes, ours that the world's imitate, or are we mirrorments merely of a high designing aloof and generous as a host to us: what would become of us if we declined and staked out a level affirmation of our own: we wind the brook into our settlement and husband the wind to our sails and blades: what is to be grateful when let alone to itself, as for a holiday in naturalness: the albatross, ah, fishes the waves with a will beyond the waves' will, and we, to our own doings, put down the rising of sea or mountain slope: except we do not finally put it down: still, till the host appears, we'll make the masters here.