Her Head Is Full of Poems

Sing

with gratitude to Sappho (for the first line)

You know the place: then

leave the road and come to us
waiting where the fields
are grieving, in the grasses

Dear to you; a weaving
is spread over the trunk of the
fallen oak; the creek

sings through plum branches;
eucalyptus shades the damp
earth; curls of its silver dream

the cry of a vireo; in meadows
where foxes have grown plump by
golden poppies, the scent of

bay awakens the old one’s bones.
Grandmother, hold our hurried hearts in
your body’s rhythms,

Deep and slow.