A SPLURGE OF WORSENING FOR WHICH ONE WILL PAY

The fear was jays just had no way to know
Those codes, embedded in the morning rain,
Trucks bearing gondolas loaded with grapes
Gearing down on the highway, as though months

Of hastening toward fall’s beckonings would play
Out in what coming sundries! —But the eye
Still hungers. We’ll be leaving ample room
There to maneuver, where the starling starves,

Where vines appear—to love hard times as much
As any of us, that the vintage be
Torn from the earth quietly as sunlight
Falls on a hillside vineyard.
Let the rains

Continue, I am happy as scrub jays
Harvest their acorns. Such a bumper crop
Has not been here for years, among a dearth
Of sadness, to judge by the hermit thrush

Down in the darkening garden, where we breathed
For free…
Until distilled intoxicants
Arrive, we’ll be left hanging—out in back,
With the alembic, say, of Plato’s mind

To guide us for a while. But in the thick
Of thinking things through we’re so often lost,
Albeit in a “compact metric space,”
Austere and timeless, a Platonic form

Itself, of sorts.
Out standing in the field,
Electric, with a buzz on, in my shorts,
I’d rather celebrate when static air
Goes lively, new waves battering the shore.









IX.27.2008