lamium

by louise gluck

this is how you live when you have a cold heart.
as i do: in shadows, trailing over cool rock,
under the great maple trees.

the sun hardly touches me.
sometimes i see it in early spring, rising very far away.
then leaves grow over it, completely hiding it.  i feel it
glinting through the leaves, erratic,
like someone hitting the side of a glass with a metal spoon.

living things don't all require
light in the same degree.  some of us
make our own light: a silver leaf
like a path no one can use, a shallow
lake of silver in the darkness under the great maples.

but you know this already.
you and the others who think
you live for truth and, by extension, love
all that is cold.