The Waves
Photo by the author
O
Virginia
how she struggled
with all the beauty
she noticed
in her darkness
that blue moth
its motile wings still as night
on dung dropped hot
on summer roads
where horses passed
those apple petals
shaken free but
heaped without fruit
those haunting thuds
at night when fulsome apples
fell and rotted
awaiting moths
those drops of dew
on snails’ backs
pushing past or under
one mountainous fallen
leaf in Kew Gardens
as visitors came and went
avoiding forces
they could not avoid
O
how she tasted
honeysuckle fearing
and wanting an end
like that pitiful
moth that came flapping
hapless on her window
pained as if against
her own dark eyes
deftly yawping life
O
her
ineluctable thoughts
of rocks in her pockets
to the River Ouse
with her noticings
and her words of noticing
all down and down
and away
one last away
with the river’s waters
toward the madding sea
of her sixtieth year
O
her words
her fiction
her diary
her reviews
how they sharpened
our conscious streams