When they stand in the wet
where the jewelweed grows,
their binoculars set
on a night heron's pose
at the edge of a pond
with a turtlehead frond--

When a hummingbird zooms
with a linear bold-
ness to jewelweed blooms
in translucence of gold,
and it hovers and floats
at the jewelweed throats--

do the sunhatted heads
with their whitening hair
feel the thrumming of threads
of the numinous there
in the god-haunted years
before life disappears?

By the yellowbill's call
from the top of a tree,
are they taken in thrall
as they struggle to see
in the aspenleaf green
that which cannot be seen?

In a pilgrimage made
to a rural-route park,
what is sought is unsaid.
Like the sharpening spark
at the edge of the knife,
these scintillas of life.