The Pines
much later, Love in her apron of differing greys is
poaching pears
and neatly quarters glowing halves and slips them
into syrup,
each a shining minute that extends in
sweetness, stitching at the loss of symmetry
in darkness, needles sweep into the sea of bark
the pin d’alep,
the corsican, the black pine boughs in wind
the way that time divides on pages
apron loosely tied in winding strings
on one page, night and storm—and on another, afternoon: the
falls of ash so fine, they only show where
brushed—
and fires delay the flights along the coast
again, again, the pears divide—
in rooms,
I write the way the wasps record their capture on the glass
The Hunter Fresco
We looked out through the traceries of wool on water;
glass brushed into regions
in the chamber, forests under cleared-of-weather
blue that fixtures grit of astres to the rock
what hand, when once
that alders in the rain—the painted alders
would have traced these words in ink across the facing
pages of your back one afternoon
the soap left honey in the stairs
and where, uncovered by the quick dawn in a clearing
Rhone between two lines of surf
