In Summer, By Denise Levertov

When the light, late in the afternoon, pauses among

the highest branches of the highest trees,

they stir a little, as if in pleasure. Light and a passing breeze

become one and the same, a caress. Then the lower branches,

leaves or needles in shadow, talk up the lilt

of that response, their green with its hint of blue forming

what, if it were sound, could be called

a chord with the almost yellow of those

the sunlight tarries with.

From “Sands of the Well” by Denise Levertov (A New Directions Paperback: 136 pp., $9.95)