Painting by Pamela Heater
In the Slow Green
In the slow green air of an all-day rain,
light hangs like pearls made of sky
from each angle
in the architecture of spider-web.Low fog spindles pensive grey above the river
where it sighs, anticipating lake, waiting
that moment when river loses identity
and lake horizons itself: grey/line / grey/line.Below the day-long patience of rain,
earth opens. bulbs find themselves
reaching both down and up:
planting roots, rising for light.Each green stem slowly inches
upward in silence, in dark.
In the arms of earth and rain,
each grub and worm
each larva
each rotting caul—there each bulb's beating heart
deep in earth's placenta
—understands.Each IS;
each needs no more
than perhaps a pale downsift
of winter sun.
Dawn
Dawn blunders across the horizon,
mumblety-pegs
blades
of shadow across broken fields;light old by 8 ½ minutes
before it hits the corn,
before it bends the grass
before it touches the window ledge;
before
the sacristy of night slams shut.Ditches fill with shadow;
the vole will wait.A woman stands at her window
neither in shadow
nor in light.She remembers everything.
