While Walking with Wordsworth Across a Constable Landscape

While Walking with Wordsworth Across a Constable Landscape

I had not thought I could not
Grasp the light.
The light lay before me.
I went towards the light.
I could not but grasp it.
And yet the nearer to the light I went
The light kept, always, ahead of me,
Just beyond my grasp.

How half-a-century later,
I have yet to grasp the light,
Save the knowledge that the light
Is not meant to be grasped,
Which knowledge allows me
Grasp the light, after all,
Just like the light reflected
On the water in the rower's path.

Philip Kuepper
(December 2010)