Late night on the porch, thinking of old poems. Another day's work, another evening's, done. A large moth, probably Catocala, batters the screen, but lazily, its strength spent, its wings tattered. It perches trembling on the sill. The sky is hot dark summer, neither moon nor stars, air unstirring, darkness complete; and the brook sounds low, a discourse fumbling among obstinate stones. I remember a poem I wrote years ago when my wife and I had been married twenty-two days, an exuberant poem of love, death, the white snow, personal purity. Now I look without seeing at a geranium on the sill; and, still full of day and evening, of what to do for money, I wonder what became of purity. The world is a complex fatigue. The moth tries once more, wavering desperately up the screen, beating, insane, behind the geranium. It is an immense geranium, the biggest I've ever seen, with a stem like a small tree branching, so that two thick arms rise against the blackness of this summer sky, and hold up ten blossom clusters, bright bursts of color. What is it -- coral, mallow? Isn't there a color called "geranium?" No matter. They are clusters of richness held against the night in quiet exultation, five on each branch, upraised. I bought it myself and gave it to my young wife years ago, a plastic cup with a 19 pound seedling from the supermarket, now so thick, leathery-stemmed, and bountiful with blossom. The moth rests again, clinging. The brook talks. The night listens. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE RIVALS by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON THE FAMILY by KATHERINE MANSFIELD THE DECISION (APRIL 14, 1861) by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE COMING OF WAR: ACTAEON by EZRA POUND AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL by KATHARINE LEE BATES BROTHERS by GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS THE CONQUERED BANNER by ABRAM JOSEPH RYAN |