Summer Poems

Haze. Three student violists boarding
a bus. A clatter of jackhammers.

To go to Lvov. Which station
for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew

At first, I didn't notice what a noise
   The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at

On motorcycles, up the road, they come:
Small, black, as flies hanging in heat, the Boys

Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu.
Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu.

The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

Now the rich cherry, whose sleek wood,
And top with silver petals traced

The thick-walled room’s cave-darkness,
cool in summer, soothes

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.
All over the sand road where we walk

In those days I thought their endless thrum
    was the great wheel that turned the days, the nights.

Child
one with the sun

Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower,
mist in the pines so thick the crows delight

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mudville nine that day;
The score stood four to two with but one inning more to play.

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

I once hit clothespins
for the Chicago Cubs.

The game of baseball is not a metaphor
and I know it’s not really life.

Adrift in the liberating, late light
of August, delicate, frivolous

Fires, always fires after midnight,
the sun depending in the purple birches

Sometimes I wish I were still out
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel

Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late

Last night the apple trees shook and gave each lettuce a heart
Six hard red apples broke through the greenhouse glass and

With this rain I am satisfied we will be together
in the spring. Seeds of water on my window glass

We had two gardens.
A real flower garden

Jim just loves to garden, yes he does.
He likes nothing better than to put on

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating

I couldn't have waited. By the time you return
it would have rotted on the vine.

I leave the formal garden of schedules
where hours hedge me, clip the errant sprigs

Sleepy and suburban at dusk,
I learn again the yard’s

Whenever I see two women
       crowned, constellated friends

A tulip, just opened, had offered to hold
   A butterfly, gaudy and gay;

The children are hiding among the raspberry canes.
They look big to one another, the garden small.

A second crop of hay lies cut
and turned. Five gleaming crows

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.

Spun silk of mercy,
long-limbed afternoon

Like words put to a song, the bunched tobacco leaves
are strung along a stick, the women

Why were you born when the snow was falling?
You should have come to the cuckoo’s calling