August is Why
by David Filer
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons —
— Emily Dickinson, Poem #258
Don’t take too much from
a still Spring evening.
There have been others.
Spring is like that:
at first it takes one’s
breath away, the eyes
see nothing but love’s
object. Not love even,
that comes much later.
We’re talking about
desire, and desire —
as it comes to all —
is like a still Spring
evening, the held warmth
of it, the silence
just this side of rage.
We don’t want to talk
about rage in the same
breath as Spring, it goes
against tradition,
against the silence
that comes before tears.
Talk instead about
the drifting thistle
seed, one of many.
Talk instead about
the cedar waxwing,
in the backyard ash
tree. Something’s going
on, there’s even been
some rain, and August
has crept in on us,
insects fill the air,
behind them, pastel clouds
picking up the last
sunlight of the day —
August already,
in its hot splendor —
already, when we
were talking about
Spring, talking about
desire, as if it were
love, or something as
small as the cedar
waxwing in the ash,
and silent, like rage,
and August is why
there will be Winter,
just visible now
in the curling brown
edges of the leaves,
in the slant of light
through the pastel clouds.
Don’t take too much from
a still Spring evening,
and don’t talk about
desire, or love, or
that one thistle seed
drifting across . . . and
don’t talk about rage.
Charting
by David Filer
The sad, lucent, malevolence of the heavens . . .
— David St. John, Lucifer by Starlight
The stars emerge at
dusk and find the names
we have given them:
Orion. Lyra.
Cassiopeia.
Cancer. Gemini.
Then they are ours, skies
we have stories for,
skies we’ve been warned of,
until a new dawn
comes, and they are blind
to us again, just
Venus, the cold one,
setting late but bright,
reminding us, though
we have modern dreams,
not to forget love’s mean
dependence on night.
Knowing
by Alice Bolstridge
All living, dying things I touch or see
deceive my knowing — the world’s not me,
it’s other: bear, rock, beech tree.
Touching you, my other, gives such pleasures
I think I’ve entered paradise, measured
and crossed world bounds. I’m just assured
I’ll not be lonely anymore when the world
dissolves in darkness and all is void
again, all one, all unborn. No rod
or road. Like Job, I cry out for presence
I behold. When world and I are one scent
there is no smell, and I can’t know myself
nor you. But, in fertile absence, something breathes,
beckons. We waver, flutter like falling leaves.
Self Similarity
by Alice Bolstridge
Veins map surfaces. In mayflower
petals and leaves, they form boundaries
of smaller and smaller patterns. Things
branch — stems, trees, families, water systems,
blood and nerve paths. Weather maps show
the air itself swirling, heat rising to form
storms in the image of galactic spirals.
As large and as small as my eye can see,
design governs, but hard as I look
I cannot see the designer. Some place
in Tennessee, trees grow on top of huge boulders.
Roots curl down around the rock
to find a hold in earth. Unseeing, designer
and designed resist and hold each other.