Two Poems

Susan Stewart

The Dune

Now that the thread has caught fire,
the hem lies ragged.
Now that the pain throbs deep,
the vein appears.

The vacant sky above,
the funneled hours, the whirling
days, each yanked away
to night that follows night.

Now that the little lies
accrue into the vast
incredulity, fear on fear
swells: a wave.

Slipping down the dune or
climbing? Who can tell?
The small cries, growing smaller,
fly past and vanish.

Were they gulls or drowning children
–and who was meant to hear
and who to act? The spare grass
dead beside the carapace

emerging. The shell soon cuts
its form into the strand
and stays. You despaired,
abandoned,

but then you saw
the cornflower, felled
within the bramble, the menace in
the permanence of sand.

The hollow tree

  Sialia sialis—the eastern bluebird relies upon a hollow tree

I

Your lips to its lips                        place of
secrets between
the living                                    and the dead, though living
place or dead place                        I cannot tell.

Soft mouth within/                                         /against the rigid bark.
old leather                                                     heart
unyielding.

II
A doe lifting high steps                                   across
the foaming stream.
Like a current, life                                                            under the surface.

A flame flaring
nimble, contained,                                      the fire holding fire
as a body only body

cambium
phloem
and sap flowing up                             and up, countering

whatever draws

the roots down,
asunder.

III

Yet something stable                                    still, a witness unmoving
heartwood,                                                              year after years–

an infant in a
white cotton cap
lying on a blanket
in the shade

one, then two,                                                head to toe, toe to head

then jousting dreams

of knights playing                                          conkers, knocking hard their satin-sided
seeds

where the blue plank floated                                              by ropes below
the broad                                                          five-fingered leaves.

IV

Vertigo, sing the spinning swing                                           then turn and turn
in the other                                                                         direction, push
to the sky                                                                                 so your hair sweeps the ground,
the pendulum                                                                              comes slowly
to its rest.

V

Everything reciprocates
everything turns back
to the start, to the force
of beginning–

equal                                                                                 and opposite,

with one exception:
the path from heat
to cold.

(a patch of sunlight there
where the hollow tree once stood
and you, just now,
held lightly in its light.)