Who Has Seen Anything Cleaner?

…I wish we could be friends,

  but when he sees me

    daring to look at him

      he opens his strong arms

that are dressed, always, in the darkest ribbons,

  and floats off —

    but only a little way

      and he’s down again on the sandy track.

and who has seen yet anything cleaner,

  bolder,

    more gleaming, more certain of its philosophy

      than the eye he turns back?

From ‘Crow’ by Mary Oliver