This morning the near-solstice sun rising
in the northeast was a knot of gold
in a blue bed of clouds, a naked
splendor like a beloved’s navel with all
its generative power. I traveled back
a long ways seeing that, regarded that
primal bolus from some veldt my genes
remembered, innocent of astronomy,
therefore without intellectual defense
against that Most Holy before me,
looming portal into the lost magic.
Maybe I was even before language,
as unable to name what I saw as
to behold it for more than a moment.
Thomas R. Smith