Turning
Going too fast for myself I missed
more than I think I can remember
almost everything it seems sometimes
and yet there are chances that come back
that I did not notice when they stood
where I could have reached out and touched them
this morning the black Belgian shepherd dog
still young looking up and saying
Are you ready this time
W.S. Merwin
Harvest Moon-
The Mockingbird Sings in the Night
No sky could hold
so much light -
and here comes the brimming,
the flooding and streaming
out of the clouds
and into the leaves,
glazing the creeks,
the smallest ditches!
And so many stars!
The sky seems stretched
like an old black cloth;
behind it, all
the celestial fire
we ever dreamed of!
And the moon steps lower,
quietly changing
her luminous masks, brushing
everything as she passes
with her slow hands
and soft lips -
clusters of dark grapes,
apples swinging like lost planets,
melons cool and heavy as bodies -
and the mockingbird wakes
in his hidden castle;
out of the silver tangle
of thorns and leaves
he flutters and tumbles,
spilling long
ribbons of music
over forest and river,
copse and cloud -
all heaven and all earth
wherever the white moon
fancies her small wild prince-
field after field after field.
Mary Oliver
Fig Cartography
How to begin this? There’s a dead wasp
in the depths of every fig you’ve ever eaten.
These days, I’m trying not to take everything
as metaphor, but still. It’s the audacity I find
hard to bear. My friend considers every fig
an erotic revelation—sends me photographs
of splayed red flesh and through her eyes
I am there. Something already drenched
and begging for ravage. This is what desire does.
It makes an obscenity of the earth. And I think
I can never tell her, never risk the ruin. Who
am I to lodge a seed of venom and exoskeleton?
And then I think: she knows, of course
she already knows. It is so easy to love something
with a secret wasp heart. I don’t know why
we love like this, except to say: you felt it too,
didn’t you? First you shirk and then you lean
closer, longing for sweetness, but better than that,
longing for the crunch of legs between your teeth.
Jane Flett
.
Japanese sweet potatoes
Karaage drums
From somewhere
a calm musical note arrives.
You balance it on your tongue,
a single ripe grape,
till your whole body glistens.
In the space between breaths
you apply it to any wound
and the wound heals.
Soon the nights will lengthen,
you will lean into the year
humming like a saw.
You will fill the lamps with kerosene,
knowing somewhere a line breaks,
a city goes black,
people dig for candles in the bottom drawer.
You will be ready. You will use the song like a match.
It will fill your rooms
opening rooms of its own
so you sing, I did not know
my house was this large.
Naomi Shihab Nye
.
My Cats
