Three poems from Dark Retreat

Three poems from Dark Retreat

Three poems from Dark Retreat

Dark One, it is the summer now: the evenings feel
Beneath my shirt, and it is good.  
The trees, they sway a little when they get high,
And higher still the nests and stars are quiet.

Those wasps my children fear  
Are tight in their mud house, near lax electric wires,
And those two girls, dipped in a humid day,
Are deepening in sleep;

And I am left alone  
With you inside those wild electric wires out there
And playing with my half-unbuttoned shirt
And growing in those shady leaves

And in a black and yellow summer sting


A single word can darken the widest room
Even in summer:
                                  glass all through my bread
For year on year


                                       Yet I would give
This sunburned air for just one word,
Dark One,  

Even a word that filled my mouth with blood;

But you keep quiet,
Just hiding there, behind my death,
For year on year

                                  Your voice—
I would give up this champagne light

To know it just once more,
Even if sheathed in a sparrow’s song,

A flash  
Of a sparrow’s outstretched wings,

Or the memory of that sparrow  
That smashed into my windowpane  
In a black storm


Untuned Spring: the young grass flirts
With stringy weeds; the tanagers  
Sing with a splash of Spanish; wind
Saves gobs of old man snow in shade.

Between big awkward chords, I push
Stiff windows high, tack on new screens,
And taste this sweet old thing: chill air
That’s brushed some baby leaves of oak.

You’re here as well, Dark One, so where’s
Your hidey hole? The kettle’s hiss,
My daughter’s drawing of our cat,
That crumbling wasp nest by the door?