Monthly Archives: August 2011

The beginning, or the end
of an affair? Water obeys

the tidal surge. Last night’s moon,
liquid wafer. Coin that pays

for air so clear today, sunlit
leaves green as June again.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

A restless wind turns over leaves
and enters, searching through the house
when we unlatch the windows.

*

Cobblestones emerge from under
veils of water and moss to turn
their eyes toward the sun.

*

What star is crossing rapidly toward another
in the heavens now? So glad for them, I turn
my face toward the light of their passing.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Dear recent weather disturbance with the name
of my paternal grandmother (the very same
who made one last dramatic show of disapproval
over my mother— “merely” a farmer’s daughter—

by sleeping between my parents on their
wedding night): all right, you’ve made
your case, talked big, bared your fangs,
dropped your bags and bags of water. But

let me at least try to put some of it
in perspective. A news report says
a reservoir of water has been found
more than 12 billion light years away,

equivalent to 140 trillion times the water
in all our oceans. Think of this kind of scale
versus what you brought to the east coast,
yesterday and today. Weathermen pointed

to alarming swirls of neon orange and green
on their screens, gesturing with their hands:
Large as the state of Texas! Rain bands
the width of Europe! I’m willing to bet

no map or compass yet exists to take
all of that quasar in. So small, we’d not
even be the yellow rubber ducky afloat
in that galactic tub. And you? You’d be,

at best, a loofah. Still, from Cape Hatteras
to Manhattan, the shelves of grocery stores
emptied lickety split of bottled water;
only the expensive Evians and Pellegrinos

lay quite neglected. On the other hand,
I saw a lot of carts laden with Blue Moons
and pilsens. We stocked up on basics,
but also on a little stash of crackers

and cheese. Rain and wind soughed hard
in the spinning branches. The river
threatened to break its banks.
One of my daughters baked giant

sugar vanilla cookies. The others found
Broadway tunes and gathered around
the piano to sing, something we haven’t
done in a while. There’s an old saying

about not going down— or out—
without a flounce. We wanted to see
the sun, the dove return with green
in its beak. We wanted to see

the downy woodpecker come back
to the dead elm, the junco
with bright new plumage hurtle
out of the woods like hope.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

What did we hear that morning?
The sound of deer running through the woods;
and from over the ridge, that highway whine.

You said, The left hand is for warding off,
the right for receiving. I tried to remember
the sequence of gemstones looped around the wrist—

peridot, bauxite, rose quartz, crystal, amethyst:
each one strung and tuned to the heart-strings.
So we reverberate to each other’s calling:

silence is a desert hung with midnight stars,
the thrum of quiet waking. Somewhere a wing,
rippling air that the other breathes.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

The barred owl calls, Who cooks for you?
Who cooks for you all? Along the cobbled

streets now clear of cars, the lamps come on
at dusk. Banks of clouds haunch low on the horizon,

waiting for the soup to boil. Where’s the hail
of locusts, the plague of boils, the black

deaths clustered like walnuts on the branch?
Squirrels forage in the quiet before the storm.

Bead by bead they’ll hide their store
of afflictions, enough to eat through the cold.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.