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Amy Lowell
In the brown water,
Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine,
Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds,
A pike dozed.
Lost among the shadows of stems
He lay unnoticed.
Suddenly he flicked his tail,
And a green-and-copper brightness
Ran under the water.
Out from under the reeds
Came the olive-green light,
And orange flashed up
Through the sun-thickened water.
So the fish passed across the pool,
Green and copper,
A darkness and a gleam,
The sudden April heat
Stretches itself
Under the smooth, leafless branches
Of the beech-tree.
And lies lightly
Upon the great patches
Of purple and white crocus
With their panting, wide-open cups.
A clear wind
Slips through the naked beech boughs.
And their shadows scarcely stir.
But the pine-trees beyond sigh
When it passes over them
And presses back their needles,
And slides gently down their stems.
It is a languor of pale, south-starting sunlight
My favourite ridgetop tea-drinking spot is quieter each time I visit. Gone (or hiding while they molt) are the nesting tanagers and warblers. A wood pewee still calls, and a blue-headed vireo interjects at one point, but that’s about it. A nearby black gum has begun to color up, anticipating early migration and the need for signal flags saying FREE LUNCH.
fog walker
the millipede’s carpet
of legs
After a hundred years of reaching
for the same, small portion
of filtered sunlight,
these three witch hazel trunks
have begun to merge. The ground bulges
over their common roots.
Back home, you stretch
a measuring tape from hand to hand
along your outstretched arms.
A pile of shed
garments on
the hardwood floor
rising in layers
of ever thinner
firmament,
from denim
to lightest cotton
to breath-
less silk &
a trickle
of sunlight
spilling through a crack
in the curtains.
While
the prim unwrinkled
On a maple’s pale bark,
a zigzag ladder—old tooth-marks
from a wandering snail?
Green islands of moss
beckon across a fluttering sea
of brown leaves.
This cloud-filtered sunlight
is perfect, says the photographer
as her cheeks slowly turn red.
sunlight pours through the window and its bent blinds,
stabbing at my eyes until they're filled with swirls of red and orange.
the birds try their best to make blood pool from my ears.
No, I don't want to leave!
Please don't wake me up.
the world i've created, painstakingly crafted, dulls.
their voices are muddled as reality punches me in the gut.
What did they look like again?
a kaleidoscope dances behind my eyelids and
i pull the covers over my head.
We were at the beach. No, the park. And they were saying...
but then the dream disintegrates
and floats away in the wind.
it's all lost.
there's barely a footprint left to haunt my every memory.
"I had this dream earlier."
'How do I love thee?' she asked
and proceeded to count the ways.
'How silly!', said I,
There is only one way -
Seamless, boundless, like sunshine.
Sunlight, streaming through the leaves -
Or like this dewdrop perching
On the tip of a leaf, so precious!
He is my spitting image, they say,
A miniature, a chip off the old block.
From near, from afar, he resembles me so,
My son, my blood, torchbearer of my life.
I don’t how I were as a baby,
But I could see it when he was one.
I was glad, proud, deliriously happy,
The proof my manhood, my only son.
I were, I am, still man enough,
For another progeny, his sister or brother.
A friend for my son to play with,
A heart for him to confide in.
‘All my friends have a sister or brother,
Why too can’t I have one?’
He no more asks me this question,
But its shadow still flits in his eyes.
staring at the same ceiling
every day from late night to early morning
the newborn sunlight iluminates my freshly torn skin
as my eyes look upwards
burning after a long time of not closing
by now I know every dent
every scratch and bump
my limbs weigh more than the ocean
they stay glued to my tough sheets
the expression plastered upon my face is one of great concern
the thoughts running marathons around my head
the white ceiling knows me off
it knows my bones
my dimples and every freckle
I want to stop looking at it
but I am addicted
I ask time to stop passing.
It shimmers
out of existence
for an instant before
it carries on, leaving me
with a sense of
eternity wrapped in
a droplet of sunlight.
i gather the fractured sunlight,
savouring the feel of it pooling
in my palms, a glistening ambrosia
nestling its weight, safe and sound.
i wish not to forget, but alas, the
12th chime rings; they tug on my
heart and in its fervent rush, i am
stolen away once again.
i wish to keep my heart where it belongs,
for the sun to ever rain on my lonely
parade, to see it upon my horizon once
more, the taste of its sweetness upon
my tongue and on my vulnerable breast;
but i can only package all my regret and grief
into a shimmering glass slipper, a left behind
memoir of that rising octave my life's melody