Little Collage; Breakwater Rock
Little Collage
—Pray you, draw homewards.
Once more to walk this place,
tongues in the trees,
books in the running brooks,
as if there were
no enemy
but winter and rough weather.
Exile from exile,
free at last of war—
color it blossom, color
it fall,
each leaf a letter,
silence over all.
Breakwater Rock
Still harbor, still the ground,
a scattering like ash
of snow, a sowing, as
in frozen furrows seed
fresh-flung to anchor
the silence of the Sound . . .
Always the women’s place,
this water, cold and dark,
the old breakwater rock
the arms of an embrace
open to absence,
to all time and space.