-the unsymboling sun-

This poem arrived from Poets.org this morning and I’ve read it about 7 times since then. It’s difficult to access in the beginning, maybe, but there is a story here– a long, old story. I still don’t know what to say about it, except that it has the power to touch you if today is the right day, if the light is coming in from the right angle, if you need to be touched.

-Aida

Passage I
by Maureen N. McLane
from World Enough

little moth
I do not think you’ll escape
this night

I do not think
you’ll escape this night
little moth

*

bees in clover
summer half over
friends without lovers

*

I bite a carrot
horsefly bites me

*

I thought it was you
moving through the trees

but it was the trees

I thought it was your finger
grazing my knee

it was the breeze

I thought prayers were rising
to a god alive in my mind

they rose on the wind

I thought I had all the time
and world enough to discover what I should

when it was over

I thought I would always be young
though I knew the years passed

and knowing turned my hair gray

I thought it was a welcome
what I took for a sign—

the sun…the unsymboling sun…

*

watch the clouds
on any given day
even they don’t keep their shape
for more than a minute

sociable shifters
bringing weather from elsewhere
until it’s our weather
and we say now it’s raining here

*

Vermont shore lit
by a fugitive sun
who doesn’t believe
in a day’s redemption

*

sunset renovation
at the expected hour
but the actual palette
still a surprise

*

gulls alit on the lake
little white splendors
looking to shit on the dock

*

little cat
kneading my chest
milkless breasts
take your pleasure
where you can

*

not that I was alive
but that we were