Here are maples, flashing.
And here are the oaks, holding on all winter
    to their dry leaves.
And here are the pines, that will never fail,
    until death, the instruction to be green.
And here are the willows, the first
    to pronounce a new year.

May I invite you to revise your thoughts about them?
Oh, Lord, how we are all for invention and
    advancement!
But I think
    it would do us good if we would think about
these brothers and sisters, quietly and deeply.

The trees, the trees, just holding on
    to the old, holy ways.

Broken, Unbroken

The lonely
stand in the dark corners
of their hearts.

I have seen them
in cities,
and in my own neighborhood,

nor could I touch them
with the magic
that they crave

to be unbroken.
Then, I myself,
lonely,

said hello to
good fortune.
Someone

came along
and lingered
and little by little

became everything
that makes the difference.
Oh, I wish such good luck

to everyone.
How beautiful it is
to be unbroken.

The Singular and Cheerful Life

The singular and cheerful life
of any flower
in anyone’s garden
or any still unowned field—

if there are any—
catches me
by the heart,
by its color,

by its obedience
to the holiest of laws:
be alive
until you are not.

Ragweed,
pale violet bull thistle,
morning glories curling
through the field corn;

and those princes of everything green—
the grasses
of which there are truly
an uncountable company,

each
on its singular stem
striving
to rise and ripen.

What, in the earth world,
is there not to be amazed by
and to be steadied by
and to cherish?

Oh, my dear heart,
my own dear heart,
full of hesitations,
questions, choice of directions,

look at the world.
Behold the morning glory,
the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.
Look at the grass.

Another Summer Begins

Summer begins again.
How many
do I still have?
Not a worthy question,

I imagine.
Hope is one thing,
gratitude another
and sufficient

unto itself.
The white blossoms of the shad
have opened
because it is their time

to open,
the mockingbird
is raving
in the thornbush.

How did it come to be
that I am no longer young
and the world
that keeps time

in its own way
has just been born?
I don’t have the answers
and anyway I have become suspicious

of such questions,
and as for hope,
that tender advisement,
even that

I’m going to leave behind.
I’m just going to put on
my jacket, my boots,
I’m just going to go out

to sleep
all this night
in some unnamed, flowered corner
of the pasture.

I thank the editors of the following magazines in which some of the poems have previously appeared, sometimes in slightly different form.

Five Points: “Heart Poem”

Michigan Quarterly: “Swans”

Onearth: “Violets”

Orion: “At the Pond”

Parabola: “Li Po and the Moon,” “Snowy Egret,” “Water”

Portland Magazine: “Just Rain”

Shenandoah: “Thinking of Swirler,” “Halleluiah,” “It Was Early,”

“If You Say It Right, It Helps the Heart to Bear It”

Southern Review: “Prince Buzzard,” “To Begin With, the Sweet Grass”

Spiritus: “Spring”

Copyright

Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org