Spring

5

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
               fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
         beauty                  how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
         (but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
              thou answerest
them only with
                                spring)

E. E. Cummings

A Letter in October

Dawn comes later and later now,  
and I, who only a month ago
could sit with coffee every morning  
watching the light walk down the hill  
to the edge of the pond and place  
a doe there, shyly drinking,

then see the light step out upon  
the water, sowing reflections  
to either side—a garden
of trees that grew as if by magic—
now see no more than my face,  
mirrored by darkness, pale and odd,

startled by time. While I slept,  
night in its thick winter jacket  
bridled the doe with a twist
of wet leaves and led her away,
then brought its black horse with harness  
that creaked like a cricket, and turned

the water garden under. I woke,  
and at the waiting window found  
the curtains open to my open face;  
beyond me, darkness. And I,
who only wished to keep looking out,  
must now keep looking in.

Ted Kooser