Faint moon coming up over the hills,
late sun bleeding like red Madras cloth
into pale laundry piled along the opposite horizon,
the water a wrinkled sheet of copper, the breeze

dying--an hour from now it will be perfectly still.
All of the afternoon's sailboats will have slipped
past on their way back to the docks,
and atop the derelict pilings the osprey they disturbed

will be settled in her nest again,
the last of her warning cries lost,
having pierced the thick fabric of the dusk,
having gotten away.

This is not what we usually mean
when we look at one another and say What a world!
but suppose it were, and everyone, all of us,
spent every moment noticing.