Plumfall

 

True lovers abandon
this word, love.

It is no substitute
for a thud of plums

in the mist before dawn,
or the first apple
thumping sweetly into the birdbath

at midnight.

True lovers feel
the passion of Christ

in the ripening

of a huckleberry.
They hear each verse

of the holy Qu’ran

in a thrush’s throat,
and the Song of Solomon
in the pine breeze,
the elegiac coyote,

the rain that whispers all night,

“Be breathed.”

In the morning

they are intoxicated

by the feral bouquet

of their own nakedness.

True lovers know that
the Mysteries

can never be named:
a ball of goat's fur tangled in lupine,

a blue moth disguising her wings

as an alpine aster,

taste of honeysuckle,
grace of a whole afternoon

without naming the world:

no Word
but what things are.

 

Photo: first plums in my back yard.