Landscape of a Poem

The first sentence comes from nowhere:
a flock of birds appearing on the horizon.
Then, with the next sentence, details
are added - tall pine trees, a small pond, daylight.

Of course, the second stanza introduces
something new, perhaps a man walking
by the pond, complex syntax working to brush in
his walking stick, his green hunter’s cap.

By the third stanza, controversy
juts out like a steep hill in the foreground,
compounded then by regret and desire
which blossom like wildflowers upon it.

And by the fourth stanza, we realize
that we feel somehow lost. We wonder
where this is all going, until we find
that the hunter too wears a puzzled look.

Then, in stanza five, it becomes clear to us
that the hunter himself has lost his way,
that he is contemplating his journey
and asking himself about the conclusion

of his trek if he were to cross the steep hill
and leave his place by the pond
where he is resting, perplexed by the images
of the world around him painted on the water’s canvas.

But the conclusion doesn’t come until after
the seventh stanza, in which we notice the unity
of the entire landscape reflected in the water
and see also the birds which came from nowhere --

the birds which are fluttering through
a piece of sky trapped in the water, a piece of sky
that signifies the whole moment’s evanescence
with its rolling clouds, white as a blank page.