Wednesday, April 3, 2013

First Returns \ And The Sailor, Home From The Dream


Alan: One day, nothing.  The next, robins everywhere.  First come the ones a friend calls “meat robins,” russet and robust, but they don’t linger.  Or if they do, they soon turn wan in our chill hungry spring.



First Returns


The robins are flocking north,
the big robins, hungry guppy bellies
hanging from straight stiff planar wings,
the bright early robins, red
from a winter of southern-fried worms,
not like the late-comers,
the pale pinched robins,
the ones that arrive in a few more weeks
to summer by the therapeutic sea.
These are the fly-boy robins,
pausing to refuel,
the fighter pilots, leather-jacketed,
goggled, arrowing in
ahead of the storm.



Nancy: Wind in the spruces, so like surf, and an old house creaking, wind finding a loose rope somewhere – rather than disturbing sleep take the sleeper away voyaging.



And The Sailor, Home From The Dream


Would the morning light lie
and say rafters,
make rafters, make the white roof overhead,
make there a basket, there a bright sash?

Would the morning light lie
me aground, when nightlong
I went with the lashing of wind
and the timbers creaking
and the spruce breaking in shoals,
when nightlong I went with the water pouring
over the bows?

With the light east and the wind west
and the morning breaking,
I lie where I lie, in my own loft,
and the truth is surprising,
for the world is in motion
and this house is made fast to the shore
in the morning light.

No comments:

Post a Comment