EDITOR’S NOTE: MELISSA BLACK STARTED WITH MARY OLIVER’S OCTOBER, HER ADDITIONS ARE IN ITALIC.
1
There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave, I continue to try and make out its shadow.
A longing wells up in his throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly, I witness the exhale as a foggy form.
What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’re
not there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen covered in moss; only once I spotted and witnessed the caterpillar, resembling the old moss.
How magnificent the creator, down to every detail.
The bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey, it lacked a nature’s spirit for survival, the warm took over and feasted.
2
I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the
green pine tree:
little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.
3
The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes—
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.
As it stand on its hind legs, we have something in common for a split moment.
We were both two-legged together like brother and sister.
Near the fallen tree
something — a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down — tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.
4
It pulls me
into its trap of attention.
And when I turn again, the bear is gone.
5
Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?
6
Look, I want to love this world
as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.
7
Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.
One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me — and I thought:
we meet again.
so this is the world, which we both wander and inhabit.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful. | MB