Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Not a list, an old scrap of poetry

I was pondering old love poems today, and lines of this one, written long ago to someone dead now, after a time of mourning and in a time of renewal, came to mind. It was published in the Christian Science Monitor of all places, long ago.

Into the Summer Light

Drinking cold water in the blue air
you spread your hands
which have entered the flowers

All night I was browsing here
spring on my lips, I gave you
clover & sweet violet: now

everything opens: there are doors in the leaves
there is a stairway of roots
& these catkins, pillars to the gates

Where is my winter of closed gardens
the still bouquet
all questions & black stems

Now there is only pollen, flecked hands,
clear meadow
where the trees open & the green shoot ascends