The Secret.

Will and Dan and I are out for a run in the fields before sunrise.
It is dark and cold and clear. The stars are out. The grass is frozen.
A sickly moon hangs above the woods, and curiously it does not seem to rise.
Fifteen minutes pass. A blue and yellow glow. The trees are silhouettes. And there is Venus.
We breathe and snot and shuffle, and it becomes light, and we are heading home
when Will says that sometimes, out of the blue, he runs up on an animal
unawares, like an eagle eating on the ground, or an owl utterly still on a branch.
This moment, this mutual surprise, feels like something I shouldn’t have seen,
Will says. It feels like stumbling on a secret. And Dan says, Alec,
you should write a poem about that. Call it the secret.
Here’s the secret: the way that nature is when people aren’t around.
Its innocence, its rightness, its lack of any remorse.
But then the secret should change, Dan says, by the end of the poem,
the secret should be that humans are in on it too.
We are part of this scenery too. (And is there one who comes upon us, unawares?)
Gradually, we are picking up the pace. I think to myself for the billionth time
that if the secret of belonging were a feeling we could keep close,
everything would change. The universe would open. We could go back home.
And then we do go home, for it is time for the day to begin.
As we return from the fields, the moon has risen.
In the new blue, it is steam white, near invisible.
It seems ready to evaporate.