A poem by William Bronk

The Mind's Landscape
     on an Early Winter Day

Seeds and survivals are scattered in all the flaws
of this raw day, even though these are perceived
by being unperceived, until the mind
tugs at the senses to remind them.  The mind says see.
What the senses feel is the sharp immediate air
and all this scene half emptied, opened out
to admit the light, the thin, slight light.
What the senses feel is loss, and not less loss
for being neither final nor complete.
The senses and the mind agree it seldom is.

For loss is what we live with all the time.
None knows this better than the mind should know, the mind
that wanders, and cannot tell our name, itself
all seeds and survivals, little else, poor blind.
The mind is always lost and gropes its way,--
lost, even when the senses seize the world
and feed as though there never could be loss.
It is this winter mind, the ne'erdowell
that never finds a plan, that tells us see..
And we open our eyes and feel our way in the dark.