Overcast sky, the rain that falls
elsewhere. The canopy of electric sound
cicadas weave throughout the trees.
You have me scour the pockets
of such moments for some remnant
change— and here I lay them down
and balance them on a rim of glass.
A silver-spotted skipper drinks
from the bergamot and I want
to tip my face toward the flower’s
starburst cup. So long at work,
and teetering from one impossible
task to another. I count and recount
an abacus of spilled grain, water flowing
from a sieve: o gather me now in.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Aperture
- Familiar
- Landscape, with Ruby-Throated Hummingbird
- 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
- Milagrito: Eye of the Raven
- Epithalamium
- What You Don’t Always See
- Going to the Acupuncturist in the Market
- Orison
- 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
Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered.
(Do not attempt to adjust your set. We control the orisontal, we control the veridical…)
But seriously, I love this poem. I love counting of coins and grains, I love the infinite possibilities of “you.” But I still don’t know what a skimmer is.
’tis a butterfly, but Dave can tell you more about the skimmer. :)
In that case, you might want to change it to “skipper” (a member of the Hesperioidea, a clade apart from all other butterflies). I thought perhaps you were doing some sort of poetic mash-up between my skipper and your skimmers.
No, it was just that weird sort of mind typo – I *thought* for sure I *had* typed “skipper” – all fixed now.
“Angelus” is my poem response to Luisa’s “Orison” posted at:
http://ambitsgambit.blogspot.com/2011/07/angelus.html