Boy and Egg

Every few minutes, he wants

to march the trail of flattened rye grass

back to the house of muttering

hens. He too could make

a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh

it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it

to his ear while the other children

laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,

so little yet, too forgetful in games,

ready to cry if the ball brushed him,

riveted to the secret of birds

caught up inside his fist,

not ready to give it over

to the refrigerator

or the rest of the day.

--Naomi Shihab Nye

[Photo of our granddaughter collecting eggs today].

A Reward

 

Tired and hungry, late in the day, impelled
to leave the house and search for what
might lift me back to what I had fallen away from,
I stood by the shore waiting.
I had walked in the silent woods:
the trees withdrew into their secrets.
Dusk was smoothing breadths of silk
over the lake, watery amethyst fading to gray.
Ducks were clustered in sleeping companies
afloat on their element as I was not
on mine. I turned homeward, unsatisfied.
But after a few steps, I paused, impelled again
to linger, to look North before nightfall—the expanse
of calm, of calming water, last wafts
of rose in the few high clouds.
And was rewarded:
the heron, unseen for weeks, came flying
widewinged toward me, settled
just offshore on his post,
took up his vigil.
If you ask
why this cleared a fog from my spirit,
I have no answer.

--Denise Levertov

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.]