Summer Poetry
Looking for Gold by William Stafford
A flavor like wild honey begins
when you cross the river. On a sandbar
sunlight stretches out its limbs, or is it
a sycamore, so brazen, so clean and bold?
You forget about gold. You stare and a flavor
is rising all the time from the trees.
Back from the river, over by a thick
forest, you feel the tide of wild honey
flooding your plans, flooding the hours
til they waver forward looking back.
They can't return: that river divides more than
two sides of your life. the only way
is farther, breathing that country, becoming
wise in it's flavor, a native of the sun.
Wonder
Your golden face tracks
with devotion
the suns daily rotations.
East to west,
your towering stalks
the size of my wrist.
Awash with Wonder
I watch.
Your only work
to grow,
to tower above us,
to bring your light
to children and weary adults.
It is in faith like yours
that we find our paths.
Easy to west.
Dawn to twilight.
Despair to Wonder.
August Modrning by Albert Garcia
It's ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect–
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
What did you notice?
The dew-snail; the low-flying sparrow;
the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
the sweet-hungry ants;
the uproar of mice in the empty house;
the tin music of the cricket’s body;
the blouse of the goldenrod. (more)
Stay Inside the Rapture
Don’t rush; be a beginner; weave pearls in your hair; grow potatoes; light the candles; keep the fire; dare to love someone; tell yourself the truth; stay inside the rapture…
Marlene DeBlasi