There is beauty in balance.

It doesn't begin on the surface.
It begins below. The exchange
of heat that burns the spring
up through winter. Frozen roots
grow green again. The seed,
ripe and bursting, trades green
for green, and its energy is
at once a void, and a negation
of that void.
                                             Rope of red leaves.
Pool of yellow flowers.
What does not sink, floats on
the unrelenting surface of the water.
A river is a line across the land.
Vine strings tie the water to
the land, the land to the trees,
the trees to the sky blue
as water.
                                 My life, another layer
upon the land. My window
looking out onto the hillside
where I must take my work
to the edge of collapse.
There is beauty in balance.
A process of failure that redefines
success. What stands, stands only
for its lifetime. I draw a circle
in the air - a window out,
a doorway in.
                                              Absence is
the intangible, the potency
of life. How tangible is life?
A river rushing. A gust of wind.
A chain of green unwinding
in the current like a great snake,
silent, swimming downstream.
The snake is the water.
The snake is the color of
everything that lives.
                                                         I must know
the stones if the wall is to stand.
The trees take shelter in the wall and grow.
Trees speak to stone, and the wall
lives in sympathy with the land
through which it flows. How many
miles does the stone snake stretch
before it finds the river, the road,
the path through the trees?
                                                        The red
of life, iron in the blood. Iron
in the stone. A river of red holds
the energy and violence of the color.
Red stones hidden under the earth's
skin. Pools of blood pour into
the water. The current, metamorphosis.
The stone begins as liquid fire,
ends as sand and earth.
                                                       We are born
out of clay, slick mud pulled up
from the river banks. We are cast in
such shapes, whole or broken. Look!
An iron ghost rises in a cloud of red dust.
A white ghost lingers in the snow's breath.
The green snake moves silently against
the river's red current.

[William Reichard {1963- } 'Natural History' from Two Men Rowing Madly Toward Infinity]