1.
Spring storms roam across the valley.
On the maple, leaves appear like gypsy tents.
Wind off the mountainside ruffles the green edges:
inside one of the leaves sits a woman at a fortune telling table
laying the lone card of summer face-down.
Storm fells big branches
while gossamer lines linger—
the strand between us
*
Long after strong rain
moves on, forgotten, moss on
branches remembers
*
Light flickers inside and out.
Dove on shed roof hears
a thousand unseen frogs
*
The day starts again
hours before dusk. In sunlight
palmetto fronds drip.
Distant motorbike resonates like a bullfrog
in the summer dark, a mating call of bars
closing and the steam of recent rain
rising to the reducing horizon
To the world we go, extinguishing and compelled.
Early summer evening. Through a knot of fireflies
A few stars showing. To the world
an evening of fireflies and an epoch of stars
are the same, just what I see, no difference.
I will remember this firefly and this evening
as they travel at light’s speed into a past
beyond existence at the same speed a star’s memory
travels into the future to meet this evening,
this view. To the world depth starts to go
its own way towards deterioration and someone
determines it’s time to start counting the stars.
I never swore I would not write a softball poem!
Darkness strides down the high hill towards the field.
Taking its time so the mist beneath it can depend
like a hanging plant, motionless every time you look.
I turn away to watch the game but something taps my shoulder–
the first drops of rain. People are running for their cars
With their softball gloves on their heads. Though it lasts
only five minutes, the rain turns the red clay infield
Into a giant thumb print of the storm. The umpire
examines it like a tired detective then calls it a night.
Unaffected as true fans, the bluebirds whir and swerve
across the outfield, shagging flies.
Translations from the English 