afternoon

tomato juice
sun
bees
yellow shelves
birdcalls
largest crow
leaking afternoon light
clock tick
tock
smote (smite).

blue polished rippled stone
quiet hinge
right

in the middle

of the afternoon.


held breath stitch step

and then my head falls forward
again falls over into the end of the day.

The House on Bishop Street (rita dove)

No front yard to speak of,
just a porch cantilevered on faith
where she arranged the canary's cage.
The house stayed dark all year
though there was instant light and water.

(No more gas jets hissing,

their flicker glinting off
Anna Rettich's midwife spectacles
as she whispered 'think a baby'
and the babies came.) Spring
brought a whiff of cherries, the kind
you boiled for hours in sugar and cloves

from the yard of the Jewish family next door.
Yumanski refused to speak so
she never bought his vegetables
at the Canal Street Market. Gertrude,
his youngest and blondest,
slipped by mornings for bacon and grits.
There were summer floods and mildew

humming through fringe, there was
a picture of a ship she passed
on her way to the porch, strangers calling
from the street 'Ma'am, your bird
shore can sing!' If she leaned out she could glimpse
the faintest of mauve-- no more than an idea--
growing just behind the last houses.

(from 'Thomas and Beulah')

milk light

I remember
certain kinds of light
that belong only
to old days

basement book days
underground stone days

humming disks of light
roaming hallways
pooling in church corridors
seeping under office doors

like
spilt
yellow milk.