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).