No summer as yet

By Laurie Sheck Laurie Sheck

And no summer as yet, but it will come with its bright pieces of whatever,

Sorted by the eye yet still uncaptured,

Greenly branched and various with promise. I'd like to watch it long enough,

Held fast by the laws of its sequencings and shapings, and be so carried, the way the mind goes in

Search of an after that will temper what has come before,

Or sometimes not—: Did I tell you of the man I visited last week, who hasn't lost the ability

To move his tongue, his lips, to laugh or cry or sing or use his voice, yet is unable

To utter any words, just a few unintelligible syllables,

And recognizing this, stares into the fact of it

As at the eggs in an opened anthill? I don't know how to think of him. We are so rawly made,

So carried into the harsh and almost-dark.

As if stung in the throat. As if seared by a narrow wire-like blaze

Sharply upon the air and always.

Biography

Born and raised in the Bronx, poet Laurie Sheck was educated at the University of Iowa. She has published several collections of poetry, including Captivity (2007); The Willow Grove (1996), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and Amaranth (1981). Her poems often use myths as frames within which to explore ideas of motion and stillness, consciousness and the body. In a 2002 interview, speaking to the attentiveness, rather than . . .

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