Elegy on Independence Day
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Hurricane Warning
I still have, somewhere, A photograph of her and me leaning out over a balcony railing, Behind us, I remember, the bay windows wickered with tape And the sky spanned By a single cloud, its underbelly, here and there, smeared with that blood-orange hue We once saw a field of poppies take on Just before dusk, in the foothills South of Sonora. There were always poppies, it seemed, washing up and dwindling to a golden point on a hillside Otherwise green with wild oats and weeds, Or tawny with them, depending. I don’t know what might have become of us in time—ten years, twenty, The two of us walking off, as lovers Are supposed to, hand in hand, Toward one inevitability or another—but time would have had a chance To deal with us, in its own sweet time. It would have brought us pain, and lulled It all away; it would have made the hillsides And the swaths of poppies fronting as crops of sunlight All the more difficult, in the end, to leave; and toward the end, it may have left Us both alone. Along the country backroads, Wildflowers luxuriate and strive—snowdrops, and buttercups, And the shooting stars that briefly fan their faces to the sun. You can pull over almost anywhere you want, and wander, And lie back in whatever blossoms you can find. All around you the hills, like sea swells, are rolling in Or rolling out, and the clouds you’re gazing at The same, and there seems to be no end of it, no point of reference, or anchor, Except for the faintly bitter scent of the wildflowers you chose to walk through, and lie down in. |
