summer reading: poems for August
blackberries hanging in the brambles, the dirge of loons, and listening straight into the woods.
August by Mary Oliver
When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves: there is
this happy tongue.
The Singer by Chard deNiord
For Ethan Canin
I sat on the dock at dusk and spoke
to the fish who swam beneath me
like ears with fins to hear my secrets.
“That words come close?” I whispered.
“The sky enters me like a sword
with my own hand on the hilt.
How to witness what I can't express—
the smell of lilacs, the dirge of loons.
Make up the rest if you wish.
Less is enough.
Say I sound like one of the Hosts.
That I'm crying also and there's nothing
you can do to make me stop.
That I'm like the peepers, katydids, and thrush
with my own song—all call in the opera of dusk.
Or is it response?”
Canoeing at Night by Brad Leithauser
I
Water pulled on wood at first
And muscles bunched. We struck
The bank once, with dull solidity.
Spinning free, we turned a wide arc,
Sliding through the forest into forest.
It was all the same to us. Cold,
Cramping, we wanted more than trees.
We worked against ourselves,
Shoveling up water that dropped away,
Digging holes in the river that filled behind us.
We thought of the lamp
Hung downstream on a limb.
Stop, it meant, and that
Is what we wanted.
II
Later we get our timing back.
Clapping bats come down to us,
Sounding us out. And though
Not quite sure of the river,
We steer for the center
And catch the cold drift of it.
We wait for something: a snapping
Of fish, a rustling in the grass;
We wait to face a silver animal
Rapt in its own reflection.
Listening straight into the woods,
We try to lose all other
Noises — the wrinkling of water
Or our own steady breathing.
III
Here, the river is deeper. The moon
Drifts up over the woods. We move
Fast, and in this new light
It is all white water.
Smoothly opening up to us,
The river falls forward.
Trees swing by, bobbing,
As if they float on water.
You and I, we take the bends together,
One good turn after another, moving
On to where our knot of light
Lies unraveled in the water.
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