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West Marin Night During Perseid Showers
Poem by Brenda Hillman — published January 01, 2011
The sugars drop down in the berries,
no longer specific. That mangy deer
sleeps the summer off. You've been here
the night away, a body with its bit
of local pain. Under the hazel: spots
on satyr anglewings [Polygonia satyrus] spaced
unevenly. Spikenard bundles
poof up from huge stalks.
["Then took Mary a pound of
ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed
the feet of Jesus…"]
Friday self-dislike is replaced
by earlier mild energy.
Fiery rocks hurl themselves through
"heavenly dust"-- (Why are 'e' & 'r' reversed
in fiery while f stays on first--)
You've been up the night away, a silhouette
of clauses: claws in the dust
making you sneeze. Vast a thought,
vast a sky waiting for morning fog.
Pour down, light strands of the difficult;
the moon will not rise
with its golden axe of being--
If the fog is too thick, the meteors are on line:
http://topaz.streamguys.tv/~spaceweather/index.html
The first void is God waiting; that
continues, of course. Then a couple of pings.
Sounds like the back of the universe
is getting acupuncture:
@@** a spinning is entered by needles
of gloved rain.
Brenda Hillman holds the Olivia Filippi Chair in poetry at St. Mary's College in Moraga. The most recent of her many books of poetry is Practical Water (Wesleyan University Press, 2010).
This article was a main feature in Bay Nature magazine.
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