JENNIFER K. SWEENEY
How Many Leaves and Boats Gather Together
Buoy the blue
night, small boats lifting
beyond the layers of tremble and tree.
We are the watchers of the world,
the notetakers, the lonely captains
sailing over the good earth.
Meanwhile, the birds fly west--
if they had a religion it would be
the agreement of flight--
and fish swim east in silver wheels
through a horizon of slow-blooming sound.
Leave the moonlight to itself,
what little may be answered.
Let night whisper into the hull
of your ear
the other language.
Dark wildwood,
that we ride silently
into the harbor
alone and no one sees--
arrival or departure--
but that it matters to be briefly
carried to so close a place
as home on such
a thin and flickering sea.
211 The Paris-American
Buoy the blue
night, small boats lifting
beyond the layers of tremble and tree.
We are the watchers of the world,
the notetakers, the lonely captains
sailing over the good earth.
Meanwhile, the birds fly west--
if they had a religion it would be
the agreement of flight--
and fish swim east in silver wheels
through a horizon of slow-blooming sound.
Leave the moonlight to itself,
what little may be answered.
Let night whisper into the hull
of your ear
the other language.
Dark wildwood,
that we ride silently
into the harbor
alone and no one sees--
arrival or departure--
but that it matters to be briefly
carried to so close a place
as home on such
a thin and flickering sea.
211 The Paris-American