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In the night sky there are billions of stars,
and despite the smog from millions of cars
you can sometimes see Mars there in the sky.
While you may wander lonely as a cloud,
don't try to swathe the welkin like a shroud;
you're simply not allowed, there in the sky.
Try to imagine how poor Pluto felt,
demoted to dwarf from the Kuiper belt.
What a low blow was dealt, there in the sky!
Eye that phenomenon of lift and thrust,
hurtling out to realms of galactic dust —
the spaceship Wanderlust, there in the sky!
Why, in the wake of the blizzard's furor,
is that ship upside down? A superior
mirage: concave mirror there in the sky.
Cathedral bells and strolling families on Sunday
Fill the boulevards, attending to thin waters
Glinting down ribboned canals in the noontide sun.
So far from my love or familiar company
Hanging about the languid parks and empty streets
I am spellbound in Al Andalus on Sunday.
Without saying good bye, beautiful and merciless
In her desire to break into falling blossoms
She often rode to cherry orchards on Sundays.
Though I'm anointed fair in the Caliph's garden
Ivory fountains cool in the shady palm grove
It breaks my heart to be all alone on Sundays.
And I was grateful my suffering let up some
As the sun and wind burned off the grey clutching clouds
Early morning was cool and misty this Sunday.
Without my love to casually remark on how
The blue haze shimmers hot in the mountains distant
I think on the meaninglessness of each Sunday.
Since she refuses to send word save in birdsong
Or immense whispers in cherry blossom drifts
I rehearse our conversations one way Sunday.
Salt-blue, the waters rise and fall in waves
on a shore where the scent of seaweed
pulses through the prevailing wind in waves.
The sea is a strange place for the shaking
of hands, for eyes that shimmer
with tears, shadows that part in waves.
Strange, and yet there has always been
a split-second gulf in this liminal space
where the moon tugs at the tide in waves.
Noon and night merge in a single shade
of grey: vessels fall through horizons
of pain, emitting morse code in waves.
The gulls alone know what it is to be
cast adrift as flotsam and jetsam, left
to wonder if hope will return in waves.
The sea leaves a caustic taste: it cleanses
every cut that skims its surface, rolls
ice over open wounds in waves.
At the flick of her mermaid’s tail, he dives
into the water. Is he too late? Too young
to know that the heart beats in waves?
Between rock and swale, a flock of sheep
browsing the Irish green of March —
is this a shadow-play of clouds, or sheep?
Rain ripped out the cross-creek fence,
pasture’s a rampage of grass and filaree
and unfenced spirits, inscrutable sheep.
I never just lie down and slip to dream —
too much doubting, double-engineering,
calculating, agonizing, recounting sheep.
Watch where you step. This season, every
living thing gushes forth, it’s messy,
cud and gut-rethinking, mud and sheep.
I’m still the girl of fifty years past —
bareback on a big black mare — steep hills,
cold wind, and not a thought of sheep.
Overnight, the wild is blossoming — white
and baby-pink, old-lady mauve. Across
the way, that orchard — no, it’s sheep.
Thunder-weather and a straw-bale shed,
who needs more than the hope of May,
a tether, a pan of grain to call the sheep?
Granite boulders stand mute witness to the mountain,
leopards and a homeless race ghost the trackless heights.
Forgotten times live in the bones of this mountain.
Swallows are quicksilver hunting in glorious flight,
frogs sleep in mud cocoons, care-free all summer through,
finding a refuge on the flanks of the mountain.
A weary child wanders mist — lost, pathless, searching.
An adult leaves to find her fortune far away,
but in the end all paths lead back to the mountain.
Clouds cascade, an endless tumbling silent waterfall.
Patient grains of sand wall a waiting antlion's trap.
Blind spiders live in deep dark caves on this mountain.
Roads lead to deserts, wheatfields and rolling hills,
waves stroke beaches curving around the windswept bay.
Be still and live in the shadow of the mountain.
Sunwarmed fynbos perfumes the air, spiced honey-sweet,
Karin sees the sweet brown river caress white stones
fiercely embraced by the watching, waiting mountain.
Fynbos is a type of plant indigenous to South Africa which grows on Table Mountain. In summer it has a strong and unusual scent which is particularly noticeable if you brush up against it.