delphinium

every song

Stacks of books, every page, characters’
rages and poets’ strange contraptions
of syntax and song, every song
even when there isn’t one.

-- Dean Young, lines from "Delphiniums in a Window Box"

Delphiniums in a Window Box

cherry

now

For how many years have you gone through the house shutting the windows,
while the rain was still five miles away

and veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the north,
away from you

and you did not even know enough
to be sorry,

you were glad
those silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple,

were sweeping on, elsewhere,
violent and electric and uncontrollable--

and will you find yourself finally wanting to forget
all enclosures, including

the enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf, and will you
dash finally, frantically,

to the windows and haul them open and lean out
to the dark, silvered sky, to everything

that is beyond capture, shouting
I'm here, I'm here! Now, now, now, now, now.

-- Mary Oliver, lines from "From the Book of Time"

dogwood

only for a while

The leaves and branches moved, green on darker green, shadow on shadow, rising right up to the clear blue sky. A thick rustling of foliage which sighed as the cool breeze moved through it, but somehow confirmed its density, the secrecy that surrounded its branches, its lush growth. It cut out much of the morning sun, so that small lozenges of yellow light fell on the footpath, but only for a while, then light and shadow would move and disperse as the shadow branches wavering on the ground sent shadow leaves moving, and with it, the sound of air sighing in a little rush of sound, the small shapes of bright light moved also.

-- Eva Figes Light