one for beauty, / and one for terror

[zarahemla]

I could probably post from this book all month. I may not spare you. !!

Promise -- if you make it to the middle of this poem you will not regret it.



What do you mean you have nothing?
by Robert Hass

For C.R.

What do you mean you have nothing?
You can't have nothing. Aren't there three green apples
on the table in an earth-brown bowl? Weren't there
three apples for three goddesses in the story
and the fellow had to pick -- no, there was one apple
and three goddesses, as in the well-known remark
that all of politics is two pieces of cake
and three children. Aren't there three yellow roses
on the counter in a clear glass vase among purple spikes
of another flower that resembles a little
the Nile hyacinth you saw in lush borders
along the green canal at Puerto Escondido?
Do you remember Juan called them "Lent flowers,"
which made you see that the white gush of the calyx
was an eastering, and you looked at Connie
with her shaved head after chemo and her bright,
wide eyes that wanted to miss nothing,
and do you remember that the surface of the water
came suddenly alive: a violent roiling and leaping
of small fish, and Juan, pointing into the water
at what had got them leaping, shouted "Barracuda,"
and that the young pelicans came swooping in
to practice their new awkward skill of fishing
on the small, terrified, silvery river fish? And
the black-headed terns, a flock of them,
joined in, hovering and plunging like needles
into the churning water? All in one explosion:
green lagoon, barracuda, silver fish, brown pelicans,
plunging terns, Juan's laugh, appalled, alive,
and Connie's wide blue eyes and the river smell
coming up as the water quieted again. Of course,
there were three apples, one for beauty,
and one for terror, and one for Connie's eyes
in the quiet after, mangrove swallows in the air,
shy, white-faced ibises foraging among the hyacinths.