Come Day, Come Dark

IT’S brief, living:
Like pollen crumbling
From pistil to petal;
Like a bee tumbling
Out of a bell;
Like an acorn dropping
Before a squirrel,
Gone in a stroke,
The squirrel whipping
Around the oak
And out of sight;
The bee slipping
Away by night.

But it’s long dying,
And dark and hard:
Dark in the hood
For the fettered hawk
And his angry beak;
Hard for the ant
Guarding his crumb
Against foot or thumb;
Not understood,
Not by anyone,
Not by the weevil
Gorged on meal,
Not by the termite,
Starved on wood.

Call it good or evil,
It’s sure as the wheel
Of the crow and the kite
And brings a night
Too deep for the owl.