Apologues of Winter Light

Street lamps streaming on, and the grey
suspiration of the cold flossing the invisible
tides of air, full with all our lost breath . . .

Soon the heavens will span out - and though
I've learned everything is falling outward,
the galaxies still come set like pin feathers
spired on the dark's spread wings . . .

This time of year, before a brief twilight
turns away, I think of Tiepolo's cherubim,
all countenance and wing, bodiless among
the clouded wisps, breaking away, floating
off like anything souls might be - I think
of our lives drifting out there too, like slow
light through these blue and trembling trees.

Only a hundred thousand years ago
mastodons grazed in Central Park,
and the constellations spun over them
gently as shining leaves - the dark pools,
the staves of ice singing back the mild
ostinato of the stars . . .
                                       We've tried to figure
our place in the far backwaters and
sequinned outskirts of time, tried to pin down
that one background note reverberating
even in the rocks. But the tumbling
geometry of the sky resolves little more
than those chiseled blocks of light,
those overlays of rust and amber
that were all of an autumn thickening
the air, absolving some distances until we felt
we could take that burning it into us.

                                                           Nonetheless,
I'm watching Venus rise through the diminished
atmosphere of New Jersey, red as a maple leaf
I've taped above the window to keep my hope
in perspective, for still I'm not much beyond
that feeling at age two when my father,
on a fire escape in east Missouri, lifted me
into the cool, blue night of the 50s,
and I pointed saying, moon, moon,
as it basked there large and white
as a beach ball spinning just beyond
my arm's reach . . .
                                 And each year now
we know more, but we know no better -
what we see in the sky is simply
the softened gloss of the past sifting
back to us, and likewise, every atom
down the body's shining length
was inside a star, and will be again.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Christopher Buckley, 1989

The Boy Shepherds' Simile

Wind rose cold under our robes, and straw blew loose
from the stable roof.
We loved the cow tied to the oak, her breath rising
in the black air, and the two goats trucked
from the Snelling farm, the gray dog shaking with age
and weather.
                      Over our scene a great star hung
its light, and we could see in the bleached night
a crowd of overcoats peopling the chairs.
A coat of black ice glazed the streets.

This was not a child or a king,
but Mary Sosebee's Christmas doll of a year ago.
We knelt in that knowledge on the wide front lawn
of the First Baptist Church
while flashbulbs went off all around us
and a choir of angels caroled from their risers.
This was not a child wrapped in straw
and the ragged sheet, but since believing was an easy thing
we believed it was like a child,
a king who lived in the stories we were told.
For this, we shivered in adoration. We bore the cold.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by David Bottoms, 1982

Night Feed

This is dawn.
Believe me
This is your season, little daughter.
The moment daisies open,
The hour mercurial rainwater
Makes a mirror for sparrows.
It's time we drowned our sorrows.

I tiptoe in.
I lift you up
Wriggling
In your rosy, zipped sleeper.
Yes, this is the hour
For the early bird and me
When finder is keeper.

I crook the bottle.
How your suckle!
This is the best I can be,
Housewife
To this nursery
Where you hold on,
Dear life.

A silt of milk.
The last suck.
And now your eyes are open,
Birth-coloured and offended.
Earth wakes.
You go back to sleep.
The feed is ended.

Worms turn.
The stars go in.
Even the moon is losing face.
Poplars stilt for dawn
And we begin
The long fall from grace.
I tuck you in.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Eavan Boland, 1982

Poem to Be Read at 3 A.M.

Excepting the diner
On the outskirts
The town of Ladora
At 3 A.M.
Was dark but
For my headlights
And up in
One second-story room
A single light
Where someone
Was sick or
Perhaps reading
As I drove past
At seventy
Not thinking
This poem
Is for whoever
Had the light on

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Donald Justice, 1995

The Good Life

You stand at the window.
There is a glass cloud in the shape of a heart.
The wind's sighs are like caves in your speech.
You are the ghost in the tree outside.

The street is quiet.
The weather, like tomorrow, like your life,
is partially here, partially up in the air.
There is nothing you can do.

The good life gives no warning.
It weathers the climates of despair
and appears, on foot, unrecognized, offering nothing,
and you are there.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
by Mark Strand, 2009