The voice of the sea speaks to the soul.
The touch of the sea is sensuous,
enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
~Kate Chopin, the Awakening (1899)
Inertia
~Richard Kenny
Equinox again. I sit
at rest, with whiskey, on the porch--
and nightfall, equal, opposite--
and ponder ostriches who, planted
earthwise, feathered as this orchard
is, have donned the planetary
helmet, like a fishbowl, upside
down. So dizzying. I wish
I understood the calendar
that turns me too, as blind, as blind--
what rest we keep relinquishing!
Now apple trees are paper lanterns
candled by the sun behind
them. Winter, soon. They tear. Wind-torn,
a few of them reveal the wick
itself, before it dies. A few spent
bees lift off the porch light, turn
a dazed ecliptic down. They walk
a little on the cold cement;
by morning they'll have died, no doubt.
By spring the lantern's light blown out
may light anew, and trees will mend,
as orchard comes to bloom again--
I skirt the bees on my way inside.
I circle, too, you see; I'll ride
the slight curve generated here
out to the very end--to bed,
where breath will fail to close the sphere
of dark-to-light around my head--
Hush, hush, you'll say, the harsher laws
of motion, love, can never govern
our emotion. Loss by loss,
love conserves-- its fine vernier
is at your touch. I feel its solace
settle here; your arms by turns
encircle me, to stillness, nearly,
for a moment, nightfall turbanned
round and round...a vernal solstice
at the soul. And then again the veer-- |
