family at a deathbed - the dark kept an opportune
distance. What, after all, had we disturbed?
The harder I listened, the deeper I heard us breathe.
STUBBLE
Any art has its turpitudes: some days the muse
is at my shoulder like a scolding crow
and some days not . All the secrecy of matter
seems to shine from the shrubs outside my window.
I'll no more forget their steady flare than I can
name it. But how would I look to them
if they, like a blank village, could peer back at me?
Beyond the shrubs, my raggedy lawn, and then
the stubble fields. No stalk of corn hasn't been slashed
at its ankle. Those pepper specks in the fields
must be foraging birds.
If
they were closer,
or I were, I could see their irridescent wings
deflect light, I could watch them peck and hunt,
I could see them shrug and shuffle their feathers
as if a breeze or longing had tried to pass through them.
Sydney Lea
THE
LIGHT
GOING DOWN
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
The worms play pinochle on your snout.
. .
My daughter and the schoolfriend who looks like her,
tuneless and cheerful, repeat the old ditty on Death-
pale Music-master who has not yet entered
the mind to insist on the tune.
