Color : May 9, 2007

I began the day reading
an essay on Pink
Floyd, then from Wisdom, Romans,
the Psalms, shall I say of David?
the Gospel of Luke, Merwin:
(very late [early]
I have heard a kind of whispered sighing)
in the course of this a list
(no mark of genius, here) a list
coursed across synapses
of memory: names: Rob, Tom, Bill, Carol:
ordinary names of ordinary people
I know: an offense, cirrhosis, AIDS, breast cancer….
Memory: and just of yesterday

The weight of a day … sighing … even the roses
seem to be weeping, to be withholding
their joyous, transcendent effervescence.

I turn behind me, On Being Blue:
A Philosophical Inquiry, Wm. Gass.
Though brilliant, is too irreverent
to cite the moment : ah,
the velvet bridge the color of ripe gold.
Subdued, ripe, the morning with its sweet faces.

Home : May 6, 2007


Am trying to write a memoir of the dawn:
the first morning home in a week--
The beach was majestic, the gulf comforting,
but here I sit out to birdsong,
where I stayed, there was none;
here there are flowers,
where I stayed, there were none.
I am quite overwhelmed by what I have done:
wonder...and life...and beauty;
I recognize it as home: it nurtures.

I walk the stone path past the Canadian hemlock
to the small vegetable garden in the woods:
six tomatoes, four peppers, a white blooming
perennial sage, thyme, hot oregano, spiky chives,
three Spanish lavenders with blue fluff balls for heads:
all a mere suggestion of a garden in the woods.

Above this, past the hydrangeas returning
after the burn of the April freeze,
the grapes thrive, the peaches, two pears,
two quinces all planted: thrills with superabundance.
The freckled violet has no bloom.

The magnolia, one lemony bloom;
on the deck out back,
the Meyer's enhanced lemon with nearly ripe,
nearly grapefruit-sized globes of yellow.

I read, sadly, on the beach and in the yard
where I stayed, a sad, lifeless yard where I stayed,
a depressed chaotic space that bore to mind the imperative:
O, blessed rage for order...I prayed....
I read there even a disappointing book,
Jim Harrison, Returning to Earth: in our reveries
on death, must we seriously entertain notions of
bear-reincarnations? Here out with the redolence
of rose, the slightly pumpkin color
of the Stella d'Oro day lilies, pineapple sage,
while in the lambent light past dawn,
while seated at the small teak table, a magnificent
beautiful book, if even sad in that tragic, inevitable, human
way: House of Meetings of Amis: intelligence, order.

The green lawn is not yet fully awake to the spring,
the warmth, the sun, the light, yet it provides
repose to the eyes...the soul...the heart. Happily,
gratefully, we are home: jiggety-jog.