wasps tenderly brushing against
splintered barn wood
(Wally Swist )
-----------------------
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
(William Carlos Williams)
There is a fork in a branch
of an ancient, enormous maple,
one of a grove of such trees,
where I climb sometimes and sit and look out
over miles of valleys and low hills.
Today on skis I took a friend
to show her the trees. We set out
down the road, turned in at
the lane which a few weeks ago,
when the trees were almost empty
and the November snows had not yet come,
lay thickly covered in bright red
and yellow leaves, crossed the swamp,
passed the cellar hole holding
the remains of the 1850s farmhouse
that had slid down into it by stages
in the thirties and forties, followed
the overgrown logging road
and came to the trees. I climbed up
to the perch, and this time looked
not into the distance but at
the tree itself, its trunk
contorted by the terrible struggle
of that time when it had its hard time.
After the trauma it grows less solid.
It may be some such time now comes upon me.
It would have to do with the unaccomplished,
and with the attempted marriage
of solitude and happiness. Then a rifle
sounded, several times, quite loud,
from across the valley, percussions
of the custom of male mastery
over the earth -- the most graceful,
most alert of the animals
being chosen to die. I looked
to see if my friend had heard,
but she was stepping about on her skis,
studying the trees, smiling to herself,
her lips still filled, for all
we had drained them, with hundreds
and thousands of kisses. Just then
she looked up -- the way, from low
to high, the god blesses -- and the blue
of her eyes shone out of the black
and white of bark and snow, as lovers
who are walking on a freezing day
touch icy cheek to icy cheek,
kiss, then shudder to discover
the heat waiting inside their mouths.
(Gallway Kinnell)
.
If you come as softly
As the wind within the trees
You may hear what I hear
See what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
As threading dew
I will take you gladly
Nor ask more of you.
You may sit beside me
Silent as a breath
Only those who stay dead
Shall remember death.
And if you come I will be silent
Nor speak harsh words to you.
I will not ask you why now.
Or how, or what you do.
We shall sit here, softly
Beneath two different years
And the rich between us
Shall drink our tears.
.
(Audre Lorde)
For a while
Let it be enough:
The responsive smile,
Though effort goes into it.
Across the warm room
Shared in candlelight,
This look beyond shame,
Possible now, at night,
.
Goes out to yours.
Hidden by day
And shaped by fires
Grown dead, gone gray,
.
That burned in other rooms I knew
Too long ago to mark,
It forms again. I look at you
Across those fires and the dark.
(Weldon Kees)
Where is the evidence, the proof.
.
In your stare I watch myself gazing,
enamored, at skylines,
or blinded by a pine cone in hand.
.
Love, when it stays, is traceless.
Whose hand stretched first offering is no matter.
The bodies press together in their many ways.
.
The one coarse piece of cloth drapes us both
and softens on the curves of our bodies
and our lives fit well.
.
When two people walk far enough into the distance
they merge.
(Metras)