Listen

to the slow, savage seep
of earthly beauty, cricket
cadence swelling soft dusk,
rain-stick stutter of seeds
incanting a monsoon memory,
its long, slow surge.

Wade waist-deep into a lake
in equal parts wet and white
moonlight. Meaning: the light
comes from neither water
nor moon, but reflects
a reflection. Unbolted satin
shimmers pale furlongs,
less sui generis than the idea
of itself; homage to homage,
song to mirage, to mist recalling
its past as water brimming
a great, ancient ocean,

the mystery of Fibonacci’s
crystalline series, of diatoms
fletched and fluted
like snowflakes, of one
pale, pink, whiskered fish.

A Question

Was pleasure
ever given
more succulent flesh
than in this first bite
of sun-ripened tomato,
Brandywine, Cherokee
or yellow cherry, picked
warm from the vine
in a garden that smells of
the earth’s own wine cellar
—sweet mulch, sorrel
and sunlight
churned by the bees
into curds of thick,
thyme-scented honey?