overcast/ wind ssw 7 mph

 

overcast/ wind ssw 7 mph 

 

Waiting for the moon to eclipse, 

I stood beside the dying

lilacs.  For days, all season 

really, they've needed rain.  and maybe,

 

because they’re lilacs, (and aren't

lilacs, clumped up with their

perfume, flush with all that

fragrance) they spend themselves

like day drunks, all rounds

on them.  the breeze is nearly too

sweet and between the three trees

I stand in the easy dust of it.

But I see nothing at all

of the moon and her predictable, almost 

solstice eclipse.  I can reach

of course into the places I believe

the moon is supposed to be, judging

from where I saw it rise yesterday 

and then where she was descending.  Today,

though, seeing has to be this: a nose

dependence.  It is shriveling 

blossoms on the draught of the over-

cast’s breath.  It is drought-dry and still

getting on and going on

and going by just like they have been 

doing in this grove all their lives 

beneath skies that lately make pretend rain

far, far off, and mock

 

the solid hill the lilac has built

itself into, root by root and through

and through.  And though

they are not on view, who

 

can’t imagine the penetrated, 

(it is still spring remember) the deciduous 

limn of their twig tips or their 

limbs, these cartographers 

 

of all kinds of dark, scribes

that scroll and and write 

while the heat of the sun-

rise stokes the undercoals yet

undistinguished from the night?