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.