I’m on a bike and someone’s name is forming.
The road is potholes the road is dust.
Cruising the dirt, the meadow humming with bugs.
Dust rising, tires crushing rock, bats ejecting from under the barn
streaming the insected air the pulse life repeating life looping back
slowing down getting longer though it didn’t and isn’t.
A little letting go of fear.
A little spittle in death’s eye.
Don’t ask don’t think (I didn’t ask or think).
Didn’t think don’t think.
I remember giving in to it lying back and then
little sprout of willow
spray of the earth green of leaves the light coming down
as if through a ferny veil dirty primal randomly animate
and we are in it still.
From The Uses of the Body, published by Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2015 by Deborah Landau. Reprinted with permission of Copper Canyon Press.
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
This poem is in the public domain.