Mystery

How many words can you think of 
in which you can change one letter

and make the meaning of a thing turn
over on itself? I mean like laughter 

and slaughter, mastery and mystery;
blight and light. Sometimes I think I see

one bird out of the corner of my eye,  
then with a flick one wing turns into ten, 

twenty, a hundred reeling across the gold-
blue evening. What is a word but a memory, 

every grain also a small grace? A wafer 
to lay on your tongue; an ocean bringing 

bits of shell and tumbled glass, bones,
husks, rock salt filtered through ashes.