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Old Orchads
They're still scattered all through here
from the North Fork
to the Middle - apples, mostly - pears.
A few peaches that don't
fruit.
And now and then you'll see a dogwood,
half its branches down
but valiant, pink in spring. The houses,
gone these 40, 50 years, lost
to fire or just collapsed in on
themselves. Unless you find a grave
or a grandchild still in town, the
people aren't remembered.
Except now, when nights begin to cool, I
like to think those
heavy-laden
limbs are bowing to the ones that
planted them.
Doe Bay in
September
Clouds low over the whale-backed
islands, tide half-way in
and the choreography of morning begins
again:
a kingfisher glides and swoops-harsh
kikkireeki-to his perch
on a cedar limb, a seal's head splits
the glassy water,
vee of his wake opening wide behind him.
A heron lifts
her brocade wings and flaps-enormous and
slow-
from one side of the bay's mouth to the
other, rustles and settles
on a rock, alert and still. Kelp sways
and dips and sways.
A second or two of silence and then
below it the ear finds
what the eye cannot: old tune of salt
water when a light-fingered
wind has riffled the channel-laps and
gurgles interlocking and
breaking apart
without a shore to magnify or interrupt
them, a sound like blood
rushing through veins, like love loosed
from a tight heart plunging
back into the world, entering
everything-Heron's indivisible
breath, Seal's liquid eye, that white
patch on Kingfisher's pumping
wing,
everything that will miss us only in
passing when we're gone.
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