Sliver of ruby in the emerald grass,
flash of sun— You’ve promised me
the rain’s curtain of beads won’t drown
the flickering wish uttered by the hibiscus;
you’ve sworn the bees in the hive won’t fold
their lemon-colored cards deckle-edged
with sugar. I believe you as I believe
the wind ruffling the orderly hedges,
turning the hapless pair of green
plastic garden pails on their sides.
You teach my heart to set itself
afloat on the skin of the sea,
tiny urn bearing its few remaining
cubes of sweetness. If I am calm,
it’s only because your name thrums
a feathered bruise just under my lips.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Aperture
- Familiar
- Prognosis
- Listings
- Grenadilla
- Aubade
- El Sagrado Corazon
- Consolation
- Three (More) Improvisations
- Reconnaissance
- The Gift
- Goldfinch in the Garden
- Talon
- What Cannot Eat
- Happiness
- Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser
- Defense
- Petition to Fullness
- Heart you Want to Lead in from the Cold
- Unending Lyric
- Trace
- Prospecting
- Dear modest four-bedroom, two-and-a-half bath
- Shit
- Ode to the Pedicure Place at the Mall
- Defiler
- Letter to Attention
- Real
- Discordant
- Dowsing
- Landscape, with Incipient Questions
- Letter to Stone
- Orison
- Milagrito: Eye of the Raven
- Epithalamium
- What You Don’t Always See
- Going to the Acupuncturist in the Market
- Landscape, with Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
- Migrant Letters
- The Road of Imperfect Attentions
- In the Country of Lost Hours
- Morning Lesson
- Reprieve
- Song of the Seamstress’s Daughter
- Landscape, with Construction Worker, Ants, and Gull
- End Times
- Dream Landscape, with Ray-bans and Leyte Landing
- Pantoum, with Spiderweb and Raindrops
- Assassin’s Wake
- Shroud Villanelle
- Dear Annie Oakley,
- Landscape, with Red Omens
- Late Summer Landscape, with Twilight and Daughters
- Ghazal of Unattainable Silence
- Try
- Occasional
- Distance, Then
- Turning
- Noon Prayer
- Acompañamiento
- In the Convent of Perpetual Adoration
- State of Emergency
- Storm Warning
- Charms
- Goodbye, Irene
- The Lovers
- Currents
- Dream of the Four Directions
- Chainus
- Lost Lyric
- Dear recklessness, dear jeweled
- Gleaning
- Bearing Fire
- The Summer of the Angel of Death
- Veneer
afloat on the skin of the sea,
tiny urn bearing its few remaining
cubes of sweetness.
Great lines! I also love the close (and most of the rest of it). There can never be enough humingbird poems, I think.
Reminds me of Robert Hunter’s Grateful Dead lyrics; good stuff.