man flies, I tell you. The man flies!”
Darwin, Wandering Home at Dawn
Darwin, wandering home at dawn,
Met foxes trotting to their lairs,
Their tattered litters following,
The first light of the blood-red sun adrip
Among their hairs.
What must they’ve thought,
The man of fox,
The fox of man found there in dusky lane;
And which had right-of-way?
Did he or they move toward or in or
On away from night?
Their probing eyes
And his
Put weights to hidden scales
In mutual assize,
In simple search all stunned
And amiable apprize.
Darwin, the rummage collector,
Longing for wisdom to clap in a box,
Such lore as already learned and put by
A billion years back in his blood by the fox.
Old summer days now gone to flies
Bestir themselves alert in vixen eyes;
Some primal cause
Twitches the old man’s human-seeming paws.
An ancient sharp surmise is melded here
And shapes all Dooms
Which look on Death and know it.
Darwin all this knows.
The fox knows he knows.
But knowing is wise not to show it.
They stand a moment more upon the uncut lawn.
Then as if by sign, quit watchfulness;
Each imitates the other’s careless yawn.
And with no wave save pluming tail of fox and kin
Away the creatures go to sleep the day,
Leaving old Charlie there in curious disarray,
His hair combed this, his wits the other way.
So off he ambles, walks, and wanders on,
Leaving an empty meadow,
A place
Where strange lives passed …
And dawn.
Basking in sun,
Age 37, mid-Atlantic, on a ship,
And the ship sailing west,
Quite suddenly I saw it there
Upon my chest, the single one,
The lonely hair.
The ship was sailing into night.
The hair was white …
The sun had set beyond the sky;
The ship was sailing west,
And suddenly, O God, why, yes,
I felt, I knew …
So was I.
Telling Where the Sweet Gums Are
Even before you opened your eyes
You knew it would be one of those days.
Tell the sky what color it must be,
And it was indeed.
Tell the sun how to crochet its way,
Pick and choose among leaves
To lay out carpetings of bright and dark
On the fresh lawn,
And pick and choose it did.
The bees have been up earliest of all;
They have already come and gone
and come and gone again
to the meadow fields
and returned
all golden fuzz upon the air
all pollen-decorated, epaulettes at the full,
nectar-dripping.
Don’t you hear them pass?
hover?
dance their language?
telling where the sweet gums are,
The syrups that make bears frolic and lumber in bulked ecstasies,
That make boys squirm with unpronounced juices,
That make girls leap out of beds to catch from the corners of their eyes
Their dolphin selves naked
aflash
on the warm air
Poised forever in one
Eternal
Glass
Wave.
Emily Dickinson, Where Are You? Herman Melville Called Your Name Last Night in His Sleep!
What did he call, and what was said?
From the sleep of the dead,
