Bright Dead Things. Ada Limón

head,

      parachute and crown,

      all the intention of wishes, forgiveness,

      this day’s singular existence in time,

      the native field flourishing selfishly, only for itself.

THE GOOD WAVE

      A bat cracks in the flickering background

      and we’re dead tired from the horse track,

      all those losing bets stuck crumpled up

      in our cheap fedoras, but no one, not even

      the dog, is unhappy. Baseball announcers

      are trying to be funny about nothing, crowds

      cheer on the momentum of the home team

      and it’s not too early for pj’s, or promises,

      or some low-sung lullaby that salutes

      the original songs on the inside. I decide,

      someday, to name a kid Levon, and you

      agree, and outside the dark traffic groans by

      on our curving country road making a sound

      like the slow roar of applause when

      the home team’s tide unexpectedly turns.

DOWN HERE

      The dog does this beautiful thing,

      it waits. It stills itself and determines

      that the waiting is essential.

      I suppose this eternity

      is the one inside the drawer,

      inside the buttonhole.

      All the shouting before

      was done out loud, on the street,

      and now it’s done so shushing-ly.

      There is a saying down here,

      I’d never heard before,

       I hate it for you.

      It means, if the dog pees

      on the carpet, I hate it

      for you, Too bad for you.

      It means, if you’re alone,

      when love is all around,

       We all tip our lonely hats

      in one un-lonely sound.

HOW FAR AWAY WE ARE

      So we might understand each other better:

      I’m leaning on the cracked white window ledge

      in my nice pink slippers lined with fake pink fur.

      The air conditioning is sensational. Outside,

      we’ve put up a cheap picnic table beneath the maple

      but the sun’s too hot to sit in, so the table glows

      on alone like bleached-out bones in the heat.

      Yesterday, so many dead in Norway. Today,

      a big-voiced singer found dead in her London flat.

      And this country’s gone standstill and criminal.

      I want to give you something, or I want to take

      something from you. But I want to feel the exchange,

      the warm hand on the shoulder, the song coming out

      and the ear holding on to it. Maybe we could meet

      at that table under the tree, just right out there.

      I’m passing the idea to you in this note:

      the table, the tree, the pure heat of late July.

      We could be in that same safe place watching

      the sugar maple throw down its winged seeds

      like the tree wants to give us something too—

      some sweet goodness that’s so hard to take.

THE QUIET MACHINE