POEM
In the Tunnel of Summers
Moving from day into day,
I don't know how,
eating these plums now
this morning for breakfast,
tasting of childhood's
mouth-pucker tartness,
watching the broad light
seed in the fences,
honey of barley,
gold ocean, grasses,
as the tunnel of summers,
of nothing but summers,
opens again
in my traveling senses.
I am eight and eighteen and eighty
all the Augusts of my day.
Why should I be, I be
more than another?
Brown foot in sandal,
burnt palm on flaked clay,
flesh under waterfall
baubled in strong spray,
blood on the stubble
of fly-sweet hay.
Why not my mother's, my
grandmother's ankle
hurting as harvest hurts
thistle and animal?
A needle of burning;
why this way or that way?
They are already building the long straw cemetery
where my granddaughter's daughter has been born and buried.
Anne Stevenson, "In the Tunnel of Summers" from Poems 1955-2005. Copyright © 2005 by Anne Stevenson. Reprinted with the permission of Bloodaxe Books Ltd. www.bloodaxebooks.com
Source: Poems 1955-2005 (Bloodaxe Books, 2005)
