before or after

shortly before or after i wrote the preceeding post, i came across a poem called "a color of the sky" by tony hoagland. its opening stanza follows.

                                                                           Windy today and i feel less than brilliant,
                                                                           driving over the hills from work.
                                                                           There are the dark parts on the road 
                                                                                                    when you pass through clumps of wood 
                                                                           and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
                                                                           but that doesn't make the road an allegory.

ordinarily, it wouldn't matter, but in this case i'd really like to know if it was before or after...

a good poem

 referring again to hoagland's "color of the sky," i'd like to reproduce the whole thing here. but that seems a little unseemly and is probably against the rules. so i'll settle for another stanza from somewhere in the middle and commend the rest to your perusal, wherever you may find it.   

                                                                           What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle 
                                                                           What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel. 
                                                                           What I thought was an injustice 
                                                                           turned out to be a color of the sky.

the odd thing is that i feel so totally opposite of the feelings these lines express. maybe the thing that feels right about it is simply that it's such a good poem. and maybe what feels good is that i still seem to know that...