The earth and sky. Slackened, unbent,

Unwanting, without fear or hope,

The body rests beyond intent.

Sleep is the prayer the body prays,

Breathing in unthought faith the Breath

That through our worry-wearied days

Preserves our rest, and is our truth.

XIV.

The team rests in shade at the edge

of the half-harrowed field, the first

warm morning of May. Wind breathes

over the worked ground, through maples

by the creek, moving every new leaf.

The stream sings quietly in passing.

Too late for frost, too early for flies,

the air carries only birdsong, the long

draft of wind through leaves. In this time

I could stay forever. In my wish

to stay forever, it stays forever,

But I must go. Mortal and obliged,

I shake off stillness, stand and go back

to the waiting field, unending rounds.

XV.

Loving you has taught me the infinite

longing of the self to be given away

and the great difficulty of that entire

giving, for in love to give is to receive

and then there is yet more to give;

and others have been born of our giving

to whom the self, greatened by gifts,

must be given, and by that giving

be increased, until, self-burdened,

the self, staggering upward in years,

in fear, hope, love, and sorrow,

imagines, rising like a moon,

a pale moon risen in daylight

over the dark woods, the Self

whose gift we and all others are,

the self that is by definition given.

XVI.

Lift up the dead leaves

and see, waiting

in the dark, in cold March,

the purplish stems, leaves,

and buds of twinleaf,

infinitely tender, infinitely

expectant. They straighten

slowly into the light after

the nights of frost. At last

the venture is made: the brief

blossoms open, the petals fall,

the hinged capsules of seed

grow big. The possibility

of this return returns

again to the seed, the dark,

the long wait, and the light again.

XVII.

Remembering Evia
for Liadain, Denise, and Philip

We went in darkness where

We did not know or why

Or how we’d come so far

Past sight or memory.

We climbed a narrow path

Up a moon-shadowed slope.

The guide we journeyed with

Held a small light. And step

By step our shadows rose

With us, and then fell back

Before the shine of windows

That opened in the black

Hillside, or so it seemed.

We reached a windy porch

As if both seen and dreamed

On its dark, lofty perch

Between the sky and sea.

A lamplit table spread

Old hospitality

Of cheese and wine and bread.

Darker than wine, the waves

Muttered upon the stones,

Asking whose time it was,

Our time or Agamemnon’s.

The sea’s undying sound

Demarked a land unknown

To us, who therein found

Welcome, our travel done.

XVIII.

They sit together on the porch, the dark

Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.

Their supper done with, they have washed and dried