What It Means to Observe

Galway Kinnell offers a pitch-perfect example of noticing, observing and naming. 

Daybreak

On the tidal mud, just before sunset,
dozens of starfishes
were creeping. It was
as though the mud were a sky
and enormous, imperfect stars
moved across it as slowly
as the actual stars cross heaven.
All at once they stopped,
and, as if they had simply
increased their receptivity
to gravity, they sank down
into the mud; they faded down
into it and lay still, and by the time
pink of sunset broke across them
they were as invisible
as the true stars at daybreak.

 - Galway Kinnell 

From: A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry, edited by Czeslaw Milosz (1998)