by Wendell Berry

1.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs,
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

2.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth’s empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

3.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

4.

How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend

slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

5.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don’t know what its limits are—
that puts it in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen time and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

6.

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

7.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in this ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy—and this poem,
no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.

How often can you say that Zippy is laugh out loud funny?

We’re going to see Molly in “Gary” at the Boston Playrights’ Theatre on Friday. If you click on the Media link on her website you’ll get to this week’s short Youtube skit.

Karen, her daughter, Annie, and Matt

Karen, Jacquie and Diane.

Matt and pesky godson fishing from a bridge in Menemsha.

Pesky and his dad fighting waves at Lucy Vincent Beach in Chilmark.

Matt and pesky godson fishing from a bridge in Menemsha.

Pesky and his dad fighting waves at Lucy Vincent Beach in Chilmark.

by Marge Piercy

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

For this to mean much you have to go back and skim this.

***************

I drove to the Nissan dealer in Marlborough for a replacement part for my windshield wiper -  the arm that connects the motor to the center pivot assembly – and paid twenty-nine dollars for a thin piece of aluminum with a plastic bushing on either end. The parts guy, Dave, asked me if I needed anything else.

“I’ve two sets of keys. One works the door and the ignition, which I can’t find, and one works only the ignition. If my remote dies I won’t be able to get into my truck.”

“I can make you a new key.”

“But I don’t get it. Why doesn’t it work in the door?”

“Your key has a slight bend to it; that’s probably the problem.”

“Then how can you make me a new key?”

“Have you had the truck serviced here before?”

“I bought it here.”

Dave went  to his computer and came back with the so-called key code.

“Ten dollars and I’ll cut you a new one.”

“Wait a minute. You mean if I were in Wyoming ( I was really thinking, Maine, in the backwoods, with the guys) and lost my keys all I’d have to do is call a Nissan dealer, or you, and I could have a new one made just like that?”

“That’s right. Better yet, I’ll print out the key code for you and you can stick it in your wallet.”

“I brought my truck in about two years ago for recall work, dropped off only the key, and the service manager called me the next day and had me drive back here to deliver the remote cause he couldn’t open the door. Why didn’t he suggest making another key?”

“I don’t know… .?

“He was an older guy. Nice guy. He’d had heart attacks, been in Vietnam…”

“That would have been Al. He’s dead now.”

For this to mean much you have to go back and skim this.

***************

I drove to the Nissan dealer in Marlborough for a replacement part for my windshield wiper -  the arm that connects the motor to the center pivot assembly – and paid twenty-nine dollars for a thin piece of aluminum with a plastic bushing on either end. The parts guy, Dave, asked me if I needed anything else.

“I’ve two sets of keys. One works the door and the ignition, which I can’t find, and one works only the ignition. If my remote dies I won’t be able to get into my truck.”

“I can make you a new key.”

“But I don’t get it. Why doesn’t it work in the door?”

“Your key has a slight bend to it; that’s probably the problem.”

“Then how can you make me a new key?”

“Have you had the truck serviced here before?”

“I bought it here.”

Dave went  to his computer and came back with the so-called key code.

“Ten dollars and I’ll cut you a new one.”

“Wait a minute. You mean if I were in Wyoming ( I was really thinking, Maine, in the backwoods, with the guys) and lost my keys all I’d have to do is call a Nissan dealer, or you, and I could have a new one made just like that?”

“That’s right. Better yet, I’ll print out the key code for you and you can stick it in your wallet.”

“I brought my truck in about two years ago for recall work, dropped off only the key, and the service manager called me the next day and had me drive back here to deliver the remote cause he couldn’t open the door. Why didn’t he suggest making another key?”

“I don’t know… .?

“He was an older guy. Nice guy. He’d had heart attacks, been in Vietnam…”

“That would have been Al. He’s dead now.”

Karen, at Shear Madness in Littleton, cuts my hair and came to our house and buzzed Diane’s head for nothing. She’s the best.