Progress


Michael Downey 

Progress 

Black wires, holding 
the speed of light, 
stretch across this city. 
Their bisecting lines 
slice the high blue bowl of sky 
into rectangles. 
Now all new wires are being buried 
beneath the concrete. 

What about the soft-feathered birds 
who for generations 
have teetered on phone conversations? 
We'll have to build 
some kind of 

tree. 

Beverly G. DeMario 

Old Places of Winter 
(For P. L.) 

The boughs no longer disturb the silence. 
Not in a year has one leaf shaken, 
Yet a strong green throngs. 
The tree holds itself in air, in winter. 
What's drowned is bound by moonlight. 
Nothing is standing that does not stare 
At its own ghost. 

Nothing has changed these eyes, these fingers, 
The heart of silence knows the answering, 
The narrow rooms. 

Am I to leave with nothing learned, 
Too little love and too much thought. 
Although I cannot stay, the wild is still, 
Birds dream and wake. 

Remembrance is one shadow behind, 
Wandering, dulled by pacing, 
Repeating the grey stroke, it reaches yet never proves, 
Nor alters the face. 

Where are the branches, the blue flame, the autumn. 
Only the tongue holds still. 
If I speak nightlong, half grief, half laughter, 
How it holds, how still the eye. 

Is it here that I begin, 
All between the knees that creaks. 
Is it below the breath, hard to hold the yellow seeds, 
Too soon it's gone, the face leathery, 
The sapling picked by sun. 

Is it love that beckons backward, 
Wood calls, the years past, yet does not tempt 
the windless night 
Sweet and yet a song too human for a bird. 

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