Two Poems:

Monarchs Landing and Flying

If they have come for the butterflies then
bless their breaking hearts, but the young pair is
looking nowhere except each other's eyes.
He seems like he could carry them both
over the street on great wings of grief tucked
under his coat, while all around them float,
like wisps of ash or the delicate
prism sunlight flashing off the city glass,
the orange-yellow-black-wing-flecked monarchs.
Migrant, they're more than two dozen today,
more long-lived than the species who keep
to the localized gardens — they're barely
a gram apiece, landing, holding still for
the common milkweed that feeds their larvae,
or balanced on bridges of plume grass stalks
and bottlebrush, wings fanning, closing, calmed
by the long searchlight stems of hollyhock.
If they have come for the butterflies then
why is she weeping when he lifts her chin?
He looks like he's holding his breath back —
or is he trying to shed tears, too? Are
any left? He's got his other hand
raised, waving, and almost before it stops
the taxi's doors flare on both sides open.
Nothing's stirring in the garden, not us,
not the thinnest breeze among the flowers,
yet by the time we look again they've flown.

White Heron Pond

Either the cicadas hushed,
or I fell asleep
as they kept on.
           But I go on
           hearing them

in willows, in wild ancient oaks,
in the slow orbit
of my sleep or waking,
           where I lie beside
           White Heron Pond.

Wind whirls through the marsh grasses.
And the slender,
glass wings
           of ten thousand
           insects flare

in the shadows and circulating air,
the throb and ebb
of their song.
           Who says poetry must
           stick to the theme?

asks Su Shih when he looks again
at the painting
he loves —
           branches of
           flowering plum.

Burrowing out of
soft ground,
up to the highest limbs,
           the cicadas
           mate and sing,

then bear their young, who fall
to earth
to nest, asleep,
           for seventeen
           years.

Over algae and moss
of the pond's
still surface,
           over fields of beans
           and sweet fescue,

this song wavers and floats —
so Su Shih, after years
migrating
           the provinces, a minor
           official, turns

into Su Tung-p’o, the poet —
or as now, like
the swirl of stars,
           as in my dream
           or waking,

over sun-tipped blooms, over new pipes
poking through
rye grasses,
           over paved
           curbs

running wild into the woods,
the sure, slow
orbit of things
           becoming
           the next thing.

David Baker
Midwest Eclogue
W. W. Norton & Company

Copyright © 2005 by David Baker.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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