To Norline

This beach will remain empty
for more slate-coloured dawns
of lines the surf continually
erases with its sponge,

and someone else will come
from the still-sleeping house,
a coffee mug warming his palm
as my body once cupped yours,

to memorize this passage
of a salt-sipping tern,
like when some line on a page
is loved, and it's hard to turn.

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by Derek Walcott, 1987

Market Day

We have traveled all this way
to see the real France:
these trays of apricots and grapes spilled out
like semi-precious stones
for us to choose: a milky way
of cheeses whose names like planets
I forget; heraldic sole
displayed on ice, as if the fish
themselves had just escaped,
leaving their scaled armor behind.
There's nothing like this
anywhere, you say. And I see
Burnside Avenue in the Bronx, my mother

sending me for farmer cheese and lox:
the rounds of cheese grainy and white, pocked
like the surface of the moon;
the silken slices of smoked fish
lying in careful pleats; and always,
as here, sawdust under our feet
the color of sand brought in on the cuffs
from Sunday at the beach.
Across the street on benches,
my grandparents lifted their faces
to the sun the way the blind turn
towards a familiar sound, speaking
another language I almost understand.

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by Linda Pastan, 1985

Variation on the Word Sleep

I would like to watch you sleeping,

which may not happen.

I would like to watch you,

sleeping. I would like to sleep

with you, to enter

your sleep as its smooth dark wave

slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent

wavering forest of bluegreen leaves

with its watery sun & three moons

towards the cave where you must descend,

towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver

branch, the small white flower, the one

word that will protect you

from the grief at the center

of your dream, from the grief

at the center. I would like to follow

you up the long stairway

again & become

the boat that would row you back

carefully, a flame

in two cupped hands

to where your body lies

beside me, and you enter

it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air

that inhabits you for a moment

only. I would like to be that unnoticed

& that necessary.

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by Margaret Atwood, 1986

Of Virtue

Assuming a virtue
if I had it not, I assumed
that virtue would find me,
which it did, and found me lacking,
and lacking it, I had to assume
that my pretense at virtue
was over, that use would never
change the stamp of nature, that
nature would not be changed by
using virtue as a customary thing.

Custom, however, meant
little to me, consisting only
in that I never wanted to make
the same move twice. I was ruined
from the start, born under
the hottest August sky, the
shimmer of summer on the
horizon, the loosened link
between green and ripe,
waters inviting but forbidden,
dog days slipping the leash.

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by Joyce Sutphen, 1996

The Archer

The sudden thuck of landing
The arrow made in the mark
Of the center lifted and

Loosened his skin. And so he
Stood, hearing it like many
Thrusting breaths driven to ground.

He abandoned the long light
Flight of arrows and the slow
Parabolas bows dream of

For the swifter song beyond
Flesh. Song of moments. The earth
Turned its molten balance.

He stood hearing it again:
The precise shudder the arrow
Sought and returned to, flaming.

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by Vicki Hearne, 2007