Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Poem for the Day: To Have a Heart

And a poem for today, retrieved from a journal dated August 1992:

To have a heart like a branch
A hummingbird would perch on.

Picture it:

Trees in the distance
awash with sunlight,
the gauzy gold air is,
early mornings
on Carolina dog days.

And nearer at hand,

The still-shaded
redbud canopying my porch,
a hummingbird seated
outrageously bright, gnomic,
eyes peering, seeking.

What brings it there,
To that one brown limb among the leaves?

I put no other question to this day.

If I had this single answer,
I'd ask nothing else again.