The wind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight it’s own resemblance find
An island of dark
drifts westward from the garage,
quince leaves shoaling in shadow
like the massed fish of reefs.
But across the garden,
driveway,
flooded green of the yard,
a lagoon of sunlight
deepens.
I wade toward a shore
of early peas and onions,
spangled grass behind me
flashing like a wake.
Grown heavy again
out of water, I pause, still drowsy,
at that tidy earth’s edge.
My eyes fill with sun.
What is this creature I am,
drawn to rise and walk
each morning
up from the finned, ancient tide
of sleep where I turned
without weight
in my dreams,
tilled nothing,
lived without hands,
sucked salt and gold
through my gills?
Nostrils flared,
eyes sharp on the warblers
bright as new leaves in the maple,
I turn like a beast
just come ashore,
sniffing startling air:
soil and rot and harvest,
smoke, piss, straw,
squirrels walnuts buried in the rows.
Work’s earthen greetings
warm the muscles of my back,
loosen my shoulders and chest.
A fresh breeze, like the fathoms of my past,
eddies away behind me.