Читать книгу Words for Trees - Barbara Folkart - Страница 8
ОглавлениеTime Passing Through Gardens and Fields
Just one small stab,
he explains,
and the mesh of tiny forces
comes unwebbed,
the crisscross of tensions and counter-
tensions sunders and surrenders,
splits open
on the harsh pink succulence inside.
Domes, shells, eggs—
all that enclose
at some point must give
way, I think,
yield to the bump on the hatchling’s beak,
to September’s seed-splitting warmth,
to rot, rain, or gravity,
to time,
to having served their purpose.
Undeserved stars (this restaurant’s overrated),
insipid food, the Mâcon blanc served warm.
Our suitcases have been defenestrated:
like snow in May, nighties and knickers swarm,
shimmer and sift and dream their soft way downward
au ralenti, to gravity’s quiet charm.
June’s inconsolable: my works of art! We keen the strident oranges and yellows, the metaphors her talent could extort
from mindless matter. Does it really follow
that colour’s the prime mover of our moods,
fuchsia and green the stuff of highs and lows?
It’s spring. I see a feathering of blood,
and envy June the talent still inside.
Rains and rains
set the greens to swelling
at the tips of the blue spruce,
shingling down from the summit
of the crabapples—green over rose
over green—frothing
along the raw new edges
of the hemlock.
Tulip and iris blades glint
with the runoff sluiced
off new-leafed maples.
Under a trillion tiny impacts
May begins.
Rains and rains
blow the oceans
through my windows.
From half a continent away,
through the last of May,
the heavy maturity of trees and grasses,
comes the salt green air—
bodies of far-off water,
their earthy smell.
Time Passing Through Gardens and Fields
May ending, and already
the tulips have lost their bright labia.
Summer settles in, extinguishing
lilacs and fruit trees:
June, and then July.
August burns with the blood-
orange blaze of tiger lilies.
The fields fill with cicadas,
turn rose, turn apricot,
singing up at me as the sun sets,
