Poems.

[aquabean]

February

The sky outside the window is blue like the back-
drop of play I watched. Made of silk
that, when it fell, became water moved by hands visible
from just behind the arch. No clouds, not
like today when they are cartoon-puffy. I had forgotten
how hilly this part of the world is, when the fog lies low in the passes
where the freeway runs.

Clouds settle, turning the horizon into one great dome
and I am reminded of the day we climbed
to the top of hill above Yagul on hands and knees, gravel
digging into our palms, rough grass snagging on the tender skin
just bellow my ankle bone. We each carried water that had grown warm
after so long a day. The taste of it was bitter,
twice boiled as it was, but even then I saved the last of it
not knowing how long we would wait beside the road
for the bus back to the city where we would the nice Canadian
couple following the migration of monarchs.



Picking Blackberries with a Friend
Who Has Been Reading Jacques Lacan
by Rober Hass

August is dust here. Drought
stuns the road,
but juice gathers in the berries.

We pick them in the hot
slow-motion of midmorning.
Charlie is exclaiming:

for him it is twenty years ago
and raspberries and Vermont.
We have stopped talking

about L'Histoire de la verite,
about subject and object
and the mediation of desire.

Our ears are stoppered
in the bee-hum. And Charlie,
laughing wonderfully,

beard stained purple
by the word juice,
goes to get a bigger pot.