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Early morning on Lake Shore Drive
maze of brown
at the center, trees
empty of leaves,
row after row stretching
to scattered hazeledging the lake,
its soft fog settled,
tissue-papers,
still, grey, jade mist,
dull pearl, kingdom come -
The heart needs good work
All that comes to me now
is the prairie, how it is empty
to the casual eye, how you walk
or see for miles, alone,
how you wonder ever why
on the absence of your fellow creatures.Will you get another dog? it asks me,
or a grandmother, or husband, or son?Do they make more? I ask back.
I think not.Alive in its own work
of flowers and bees,
oaks and woodchucks,
the prairie is barren to my eyes,
and I am a puzzle to it.
As I wade through its brush,
my heart hollow as lead
twitches feral for good work. -
Small endurances
Puddles of snow
pool under shrubs –
miniature glaciers
for voles to cast through.Sparrows, geese, all as one
gather round the warmth
floating up
from the subway grate.Frozen, withered leaves
dangle under squirrel’s tiny pads
stirring breath
in the still air.Here, in a far corner of my heart
a soft flutter —
you are not yet gone.
I warm myself near. -
On healing and revolution
Gazing up this terrible mountain,
you say, love is not enough,
though when I add together
everything else
and stack it high above my head,
everything else is not enough either.So I fall back on love,
and it nudges me
back to the task of gathering
everything I can find – a pick ax,
courage, fellow travelers –
not to stack and measure,
but to begin our ascent regardless.———
From Hafiz, ‘The subject tonight is love’ (trans. Daniel Ladinsky).
Poems from in between 