Migrations

Remembering the Brent geese,

puffed chests, the ferment

of their grassy bellies full,

marching out to sea

from the Shellybanks

to some Icelandic fjord,

I think of their trenchant equations,

how they could never stay

in the landscape

that I held awhile

in my arms

then let go

like the water that falls from trees

after the rain has gone

Dinner with Old Friends on the Summer Solstice

At the last reading with the Russian gypsy cards

they predicted my heart would be ignited by love.

Now, as the host clears the dinner things,

I lay down the cards again,

anchors and knotted ropes.

I could tell them that our grief is our own.

I could tell them, but it's late

and they'd only tell me

to get over myself,

so slowly I turn away from these things

and tilt my head toward the light

like the earth on the longest day,

love on the shortest night

Daylight Savings

On a day in late October it is all there is

to leave latitude behind,

become Lilliputian beneath a canopy

of coffee trees

that grow Arabica, Robusta,

lush greens, primitive

as Rousseau's illusive rainforest.

Somewhere it is Dublin, autumn, a place

certain of its season

but here in this conjured hour

the hot wet lines of humidity

stroke like traces of memory

and precipitation beats time

on the waxen leaves

of bamboo and banana trees.

I think about what is missing from this scene:

the velvet monkey, iguana, some red kneed

tarantula, maybe a turtle of two and the birds,

vangidae, cuculidae. The door opens,

the flowers shake their sentimental heads,

pollen falls to the Palm House floor.