Читать книгу Lovers’ Almanac - Angela O'Donnell - Страница 7

January

Where do you want to be? she asked.

Here with you, he answered.

Here in the brusque wind

the rattle of the rafters

of our wood white house.

Here in the clutch of winter,

the month young with sun,

sparse as gleaned fields.

Here watching the cherry weep,

waiting for April to come.

Here where the lean shadows fast,

the blown birds beckon.

Where do you want to be? he asked.

Here with you, I reckon.

February

Here with you I reckon

I can cross the lost world

and still keep my self, she said.

Her mother had been dead

two years the first day

of the Heart Month,

her birth month

now become her dearth month.

It never goes away,

she said and sighed—

then turned back to earth

and his bright face

as if all her worth

lay in his embrace.

March

She lay in his embrace

and he in hers

when the world broke in.

The ground woke again

thrust new shoots into outer air.

She rose, washed her hair,

and both became young again.

They walked the river walk

as king and queen.

She missed the other shore,

the place she’d lived before,

though in her dreams

she ran the lake again

and owned it once more,

the sky always bluer than it seems.

April

The sky never bluer than it seems

in easy spring,

Easter white and bird-egg blue.

My gift is me to you,

she said the date she’d

been born. What’s yours to me?

she smiled. The cherry wept

blooms in the yard. He kept

her gift in a box of thought.

Not a thing that could be bought—

a year without a fight,

dinner every night,

each day a new start,

a wild heart.

May

A wild heart rules the month of May,

the boy-girl, maypole-dancing days,

the ancient pulse of germ and birth,

in the ground and in the blood.

Leave the safety of the hearth,

drown your dry life in the flood.

Farewell breath of autumn’s being.

Welcome sweetly earth’s new greening.

Now let’s sex beneath the trees,

cross my heart and spread my knees.

Faith, to you, I give my all.

They hear the cardinals’ common call,

steady pair that weds for life,

he claims his color and his wife.

June

He claims his color & his wife,

red for mirth & red for song.

They sing their tune & love their life

and live together long.

And so our marriage, for the birds,

must seem to mimic their good match.

We suffer from the same old urge

to brood our eggs & watch them hatch.

Our young have come & gone, my love

and now we keep our quiet hours,

except when they return and move

our minds back to their youth and ours.

We loved the clamor and confusion

and savored Spring’s sweet delusion.

July

Why savor Spring’s delusion

here in the heat of summer?

deny July’s intrusion

though he be a late comer?

The feast we’ve spread upon the grass

as green as earth can ever be.

Let’s break our daily fast

as evening falls beneath the trees

where you and I have stretched our souls,

the length of oaks, our easy limbs

touching knees & breasts & toes,

happy in our venal sins.

An old-school couple couples here.

How like you this, she asks, my dear?

August

How like you this, she asks, my dear?

Though his pleasure is quite clear

as August steals July’s desire

and sets the month of fire on fire.

Sunrise late and sunset long

now so far beyond the solstice

brings its end-of-season song,

sea and sand late summer’s solace.

They climb the dunes and watch the stars

come out each lunar evening.

He looks for Venus, she for Mars.

They hear the ocean keening.

The ghost crabs flit across the beach.

The moon floats just beyond their reach.

September

The moon floats just beyond their reach

as fall sounds its early call.

The slant light arrives to preach,

again, the loss of all.

They watch another autumn come,

chill their nights & warm their days,

steal their hours, one by one,

till summer’s swept away.

They light a fire upon the hearth