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By: Sue Shalf
From: South by Candlelight
their wavering notes
rising in the cooling air,
an organ fugue, melancholy and endless.
They tell us summer has passed.
See where she has trailed her silken gown?
There are faint silver streaks
in the long grass
where the last of the fireflies
flickers alone and rises like mist.
What summons has signaled
the hummingbirds?
They no longer come,
having darted to the Yucatan.
In the absence of their wings,
the kamikaze wars,
only the locusts hum,
and among the withering vines
a star or a firefly shines.
Ghost of a dying year,
I await your return,
certain of your love,
silent as a bulb.
By: Sue Shalf
From: South by Candlelight
moves in the wind
as if alive,
but the locust has flown
to mate and die, its song
the signature of summer.
In darkness quietly stirring,
waiting through the years,
the nymphs will come again
to struggle toward the light,
to fly and sing
of cycles and of summer,
I may not be here then
to see the locust's shining shell,
to feel the autumn coming on;
yet I shall leave behind
a tatter of song,
an empty shell,
when I have flown.
enter the soil to feed until the year
2,000"--from a newspaper filler
(included with Caraspace in the book)
Poems |
