AMBER

AMBER

From the listlessness of fog,

and the dark regeneration of cherozim soil

to the pungent breath of hot summer’s evening,

comes my whispering shadows

trading secrets with the wind.

After a long winter, animals bend

me toward their mouths and learn

the tender filaments of spring.

Worn around the neck of a woman,

I am the pine forests weeping before the fire,

and the artists’ solvent, I am the amber tears

pressed to the deep bosom of the earth,

liquid sun, frozen sun, the eyes of tigers,

the eyes of snakes, bees hidden inside me.

The fog rises until I no longer see

the grey whales drifting on the Baltic.

5/83?  84? with Susan Kennedy’s class CPITS

I was in Hawaii May 17