first snow
Like a child, the earth's going to sleep,
or so the story goes.
But I'm not tired, it says.
And the mother says, You may not be tired
but I'm tired—
You can see it in her face, everyone can.
So the snow has to fall, sleep has to come.
Because the mother's sick to death of her life
and needs silence.
meridian
Long Island Sound's
Asleep: no wind
Rustles down the inlet
In the sagging light
As, stalled at
Vanishing, two Sunday sailboats
Wait it out,
Paralysis, or peace,
Whichever, and the drained sun
Sinks through insects coalesced
To mist, mosquitoes
Rippling over the muddy ocean.
fatique
All winter he sleeps.
Then he gets up, he shaves—
it takes a long time to become a man again,
his face in the mirror bristles with dark hair.
The earth now is like a woman, waiting for him.
A great hopefulness—that's what binds them together,
himself and this woman.
Now he has to work all day to prove he deserves what he has.
Midday: he's tired, he's thirsty.
But if he quits now he'll have nothing.
The sweat covering his back and arms
is like his life pouring out of him
with nothing replacing it.
He works like an animal, then
like a machine, with no feeling.
But the bond will never break
though the earth fights back now, wild in the summer heat—
He squats down, letting the dirt run through his fingers.
The sun goes down, the dark comes.
Now that summer's over, the earth is hard, cold;
by the road, a few isolated fires burn.
Nothing remains of love,
only estrangement and hatred.