Remembering May: The center of the bright day

Here’s the deep golden noon hour
come to rest on our place
like a sleeping cat,
long light and short shadows,
ambers, greens and aging browns
touching fungal splashes

of palm-sized color (creams
and pinks and raspberries) that patch
the scaly ancient bark on oaken arms
flung out high above the house —
all gathered in motionless repose.
Trees whose great limbs otherwise
nod and bow in dreaming conversation
now reach only for the sky,

as if restrained in worship
at a sacred center,
the center of the bright day.
In other times of light or dark
The wind-rocked woods make up
a choreography of futuring,

the endless act of passing on
I watch from porch or windows.
We’ll join that dance before too long,
but not in midday summer-turning
May.
Above, the punch-drunk cauliflower
clouds
in great heads swell
into the sky’s blue bowl
like giddy suitors.
I promise, they seem to say.
I promise an afternoon kiss.

No need to add: And then the rain will
come.
(From a love letter, 20 miles inland.
Written May 27, 2009.) ¦

— This column previously ran in June 2009.

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