JOHN PECK
Weather over the Lake
Bowl lifting roof and path into one round,
road and roof brimming that bowl with living, dying:
morning's wide breath relinks patterns on water.
Lights in the factory at sun-up, hull lashed to hull at midday.
From strictest quantum simmer and along foamy rock
probers lean out, finding the next ford in the river.
A shuttering of light from behind, gray going grape blue.
Though I went on working, the hair on my neck frayed
like cable in the museum, flax from the Stone Age.
The creamy paint I laid on that man's house, which tarp
kept off his cute little Max Ernst bronze, had been mixed
to resist dawn shadows, noon shimmers, and now this.
Black sheering up while the powerful say,
We lack power,
roof-blow from a black root blooming icily, flashing.
But even Alexander poured the one full helmet into dust -
for a shout can break forth in which any cry wakes
to limits, and the drums be uncased in acknowledgment.
Though it reach our tongues, it will be spilled, every drop.
JANE KENYON
Sleepers in Jaipur
A mango moon climbs the dark
blue sky. In the gutters of a market
a white, untethered cow browses
the day's leavings - wilted greens,
banana peels, spilt rice,
a broken basket.
