Garden and Sea

New Year's Eve, 1986
On this day, summer will open its hands.
First, there is rain. The birds sing more freshly
after it, building high cities of notes.
Whole constellations of plums hover,
or lie with gashed redness, still-born paleness,
on the earth. Magpies swoop through the trees —
benign, close above our heads, as if we were
rooted in this waiting, growing place.
Later, the waves rush, shining with olive
darkness. I circle and flow into new
spaces of coldness, new fathoms of blood.
In warm cradles of sand we rest, stripped
of old selves, till we are the children we tend —
running in play towards a brimming horizon.