Monet painted our pond:
wind slurring the water,
lily pads blurred with white
lights against green swirls,
the eye of a cataract sky
awash with Van Gogh’s iris.

Heat Wave Contents

after reading Mary Oliver

I cannot reach you
  at five a.m. when you spring
   awake to watch a summer rose

fall into a pink-petaled
  lake where fishes bloom.
    I’m not a morning

person unless a winter
  less night yawns & stretches
    into dawn with jarring songs

of owls & whippoorwills
  and the charming squeak of
    a bat. Outlined at dusk,

its soaring silhouette
  intersects the evening
    sky, circling insects

and other small mysteries
  revealed to me before the
    pink-pollen light recedes.

                                And then,
                                 everywhere,
                              everywhere,

black roses blossom: hybrids
   cultivated from a long, wild
growing season of the night.

Heat Wave Contents