All the rain has made my woods and garden a rainforest. Every morning I walk around the half acre, holding a pair of scissors with which I clip back ivy and honeysuckle and even hydrangea overstepping its bounds. A bright litter of birdcalls strews the ground.
(I ripped that last sentence off from An Arundel Tomb.)
Today as I passed the small secret garden I made last year, a hidden place just big enough for a writing table and a chair, I saw something on the table. Gray, lumpy, not moving. A dead squirrel?
As I got closer, two huddled mourning doves materialized. Asleep.
May 20th, 2011 at 8:13AM
This Morning
Enter without knocking, hard-working ant.
I’m just sitting here mulling over
What to do this dark, overcast day?
It was a night of the radio turned down low,
Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.
I woke up lovesick and confused.
I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing
And some bird answering her,
But it was the rain. Dark tree tops swaying
And whispering. “Come to me my desire,”
I said. And she came to me by and by,
Her breath smelling of mint, her tongue
Wetting my cheek, and then she vanished.
Slowly day came, a gray streak of daylight
To bathe my hands and face in.
Hours passed, and then you crawled
Under the door, and stopped before me.
You visit the same tailors the mourners do,
Mr. Ant. I like the silence between us,
The quiet–that holy state even the rain
Knows about. Listen to her begin to fall,
As if with eyes closed,
Muting each drop in her wild-beating heart.
Charles Simic
May 20th, 2011 at 10:28AM
Beautiful images.