The Prints from Vacation Are Back
In the Garden of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen
But All Energy Does Go Somewhere
In Which I Am Taken for a Ride
My Lifelong Relationship with God
I
Real Life, Dear Voyeur, Real Life
Much has kept me from my task.
October has peaked here. To look out
the window is to lift from the chair
in order to get closer to those
leaves, still shining with the drop
in temperature, radiant with colors
too exact and pleasing to explain.
To look out is to leave the house
entirely, in search of a justifiable
chore. The garlic, for example,
must be planted, and soon,
lest the best of our seed cloves
shrivel away to no better than
dust-in-a-casing right there
in the box. And not only that:
we are completely out of celery!
I tell you, real life is a pull and a lure
and a fling-back thing, a need
and a need and a slow-motion slide
through all sorts of partially identified
coming-right-at-you sudden matters.
Some of them just plain practical
to attend to. And then, right before
Autumn, the yard was in Summer,
the whole out-of-doors bobbing
or zooming—at any rate, busy.
I hung our laundry on the line and,
charmed by the shape and efficiencies
of the wooden pins, was made
nostalgic for my own first toys.
Mushroom on the Lawn
What with a stem
so short, a cap
so long, so tall,
so disproportionate
and droll,
what with it standing
so alone on the lawn,
small and white,
nothing like it
anywhere around,
it was easy from the first
to resist the urge
to topple it.
One day passed,
and that cap
resembled more
a parasol
to shelter from the sun
someone pale
and imaginably small,
its silhouette
no less storybook
than on the day