zinnias

 

Zinnias, stout and stiff,

Stand no nonsense:  their colors

Stare, their leaves

Grow straight out, their petals

Just like clipped cardboard,

Round, in neat flat rings.

Even cut and bunched,

Arranged to please us

in the house, in water, they

Will hardly wilt--I know

Someone like zinnias; I wish

I were like zinnias.

--Valerie Worth

In Any Event

 

If we are fractured

we are fractured

like stars

bred to shine

in every direction,

through any dimension,

billions of years

since and hence.

I shall not lament

the human, not yet.

There is something

more to come, our hearts

a gold mine

not yet plumbed,

an uncharted sea.

Nothing is gone forever.

If we came from dust

and will return to dust

then we can find our way

into anything.

What we are capable of is not yet known,

and I praise us now,

in advance.

--Dorianne Laux

[Photo taken at The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, MA].

Tell All the Truth but Tell it Slant--

 

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —

--Emily Dickinson

[Photo of Moosehead Lake in Seboomook, ME]

Encounter

 

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

--Czeslaw Milosz

[Photo of my childhood pet rabbit, Diamond Dark Snicklefritz.]

From Blossoms

 

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward   

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

--Li-Young Lee

[Peaches growing in our daughter's garden.]