Wednesday, July 3, 2013

Hurrying Grass \ Doves


Nancy: July – midway through summer, a time filled with memories and the growing awareness that I lived in a world of time.



Hurrying Grass


In the heaviness of July
the sun draws the mists up from the river, the meadows.
Grass comes to a head, hurries
to golden seed.

July mornings bury me –
layers and layers of indistinguishable fragrant mists,
mud, flowing water, my feet crushing green paths in the dew.

Gone, the Tawasentha waters, down to salt –
my father, gone to dust.
Memories
burning off, like July mists in the early sun
leaving the ripening, hurrying grass.



Alan: Ubiquitous, ordinary, under-appreciated, our doves add their drowsy coos and percussive flurries to the slow heavy music of hot summer days.



Doves


Mourning doves fly
                       back and forth
      to and fro
                                       hither and yon

common as clichés,
as half-noticed redundancies.

They call from the trees
with voices like a sweet potato
played by a refulgent child,

                                      burst forth
      with a clatter
                       of throat or wings

that, if I were driving,
would make me stop,
look under the car

for anything
                        dragging
      half-broken
                                     half-attached.



“Hurrying Grass” first appeared in Blackberries and Dust (Stone Man Press, 1984).

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