Summit Beach
The Negro beach jumped to the twitch
of an oil drum tattoo and a mandolin,
sweaters flying off the finest brown shoulders
this side of the world.
She sat by the fire, shawl moored
by a single fake cameo. She was cold,
thank you, she did not care to dance—
the scar on her knee winking
with the evening chill.
Papa had said don't be so fast,
you're all you've got. So she refused
to cut the wing, though she let the boys
bring her sassafras tea and drank it down
neat as a dropped hankie.
Her knee itched in the cast
till she grew mean from bravery.
She could wait, she was gold.
When the right man smiled it would be
music skittering up her calf
like a chuckle. She could feel
the breeze in her ears like water,
like the air as a child when
she climbed Papa's shed and stepped off
the tin roof into blue,
with her parasol and invisible wings.
Turning Thirty, I Contemplate Students Bicycling Home
This is the weather of change
and clear light. This is
weather on its B side,
askew, that propels
the legs of young men
in tight jeans wheeling
through the tired, wise
spring. Crickets too
awake in choirs
out of sight, although
I imagine we see
the same thing
and for a long way.
This, then, weather
to start over.
Evening rustles
her skirts of sulky
organza. Skin
prickles, defnining
what is and shall not be . . .
How private
the complaint of these
green hills
Old Folk's Home, Jerusalem
for Harry Timar
Evening, the bees fled, the honeysuckle
in its golden dotage, all the sickrooms ajar.
Law of the Innocents: What doesn't end, sloshes over . . .
even here, where destiny girds the cucumber.
So you wrote a few poems. The horned
thumbnail hooked into an ear that doesn't care.
The gray underwear wadded over a belt says So what.
The night air is minimalist,
a needlepoint with raw moon as signature.
In this desert the question's not
Can you see? but How far off?
Valley settlements put on their lights
like armor; there's the finch chit and my sandal's
inconsequential crunch.
Everyone waiting here was once in love.
(c) Rita Dove. All rights reserved.
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