JUST AFTER GROUNDHOG DAY
Just after Groundhog Day, summer begins
in Santa Barbara. Keen smells of blossoms
layer the air, the yellow bloom of mustard
weed and sourgrass and acacia fulfilling
their own prophecy on every side.
Frogs erupt in the barrance,
and out by the mailbox where we linger
to talk in the evening, mosquitoes
gather to be with us, flitting
against the silhouette of the islands
at the foot of the street.
All is latent, luscious, languorous,
the tall grass under the oaks
already thick and green and shining.
Mornings in May could be like this in Oregon
when I got up to deliver papers on my bike.
The houses slept amidst a waking of everything
that was young again - the river, the sky,
the bigleaf maples - while I flung the news
like birdsong, end over end to every doorstep.
¤ ¤ ¤
THE RUNAWAY STOP SIGN
The stop sign is curled back around its post
like a sail full-bellied in the breeze.
Tired of its halting life, the stop sign elopes
with pedestrian crossing, heedless
of school zone and landslide area.
They interchange rings on the delicate
edge of a cloverleaf and exhaust
themselves in a passionate night
of fresh oil and soft shoulders.
It is the wrong way, of course,
but being a stop sign, he will not yield,
nor go roundabout. Steep grade ahead.
No services for fifty miles. Right of way
not maintained. Unsatisfactory
road conditions may exist.
¤ ¤ ¤
STILL HERE
These green-stemmed lilies
still come crowding out of the garden
into the winter day's last sun.
They so want the life they have,
the pulp and pith within the fleshy
solstice of their reach and bloom,
still stalking after light and air, still
leafing there. Quite unlike the purple
flower of one man's face,
the pallid anthers of his eyes, when
they found him hanging after church, uprooted,
all uprooted from our common longing.
¤ ¤ ¤
THE WAY IN WHICH
The way in which the human body
is capable of cupping itself about what is
gone, the womb squeezing its own hollow,
the tongue pushing into the gap
of the broken tooth - how flesh
gathers into need, and word brims emptiness.
The way too in which every gesture
is insufficient, all words of loss
lost, each hand a broken sieve.
The way in which we finally have
to be content with open sky
where once, bright windows.
