More on: nature

We come into dusk
on roads narrowed by briar,
dewberries firing red
and purple musk in heat.

After the rain, all over the island
wild irises find their throats
open into astonished song.

The wind unshouldering rain,
they huddle into the concave
of the day by windowpane

I’d read that they were edible, so, using both hands, I plucked one from the ground and carried it inside, where I moved it, slowly, from the table to the fridge and then back outside.

Is it possible / that your experience / is a form of joy? / Or a word for joy, / in an unspeakable / tongue.

Once a week he holds me against him like a child and I inhale wood and horse and earth, sometimes  sweat (not sharp with the agony of hurry but warm,   like a tree trunk seeping sap on a sunny day); I keep  my eyes closed, as if afraid time will shift like a rocking boat beneath my feet, and that…

In my absence, one sprig of English ivy
has crept through a crack
under my window.

There will be thousands of warm nights

like this one, millions of the beetles, this whole darkened face
of earth erupting in brief constellations.