Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, VALLEY OF SAN GABRIEL, by ANNE ZUKER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

VALLEY OF SAN GABRIEL, by                    
First Line: Full tide of summer, through the waxing year
Last Line: Into mutation on the knees of death?
Subject(s): San Gabriel Valley, California


FULL TIDE OF SUMMER

Full tide of summer, through the waxing year,
Something within me, like a secret spring,
Awaits the languorous days when you appear
To press the latch -- your days hot-nooned that bring
The ripening heat to color red the peach;
To gild the grain and shake the kernels loose;
To drop into my hand's swift greedy reach
Globed purple figs that burst with honeyed juice.

Summer, is it because my birthing fell
In your warm tides, that rippling golden haze
And towering heat-clouds fold me in a spell
Of tranquil happiness, a stilly maze
Of joy? With full fecundity of earth,
And not in spring, each year, I know rebirth.

ARRANT AUTUMN

All summer there has been the faintest chill
From autumn's breath, and far too early, mist
Appeared, softly drifting, faintly hostile
To the ripening figs, whose sun-kissed
Purple cheeks were cooled by too great moisture
Blown from the fog banks of the open sea,
And now they fall unripe and immature
Upon the grass beneath the gray-limbed tree.

My garden yucca with an unbelief
In summer, far from her sisters of the sage,
At last begins to light her candled sheaf
Of ivory bloom. Her anxious courage
I seek to emulate, with autumn pressed
Upon my round, still deeply throbbing breast.

Night after storm. Coyotes bay the moon
Lanterned in branches of the sycamores,
Which cling, a ghostly Amazon platoon
With high-tossed arms, upon the freshet's shores.
The winter rain and melting mountain snow
Have changed the calm and idling summer stream
To a wild torrent with an overflow
That cuts the bank as surely as a ream.

The voiceless sycamores, leaf lorn and bare,
Stand on the brink and feel the water creep,
Eroding rain-drenched soil and feel it tear
Their vital clinging roots. They strive to keep
Scant lodgement in the earth, with stalwart hope
That floods recede from their imperiled slope.

BRIGHT DOOM

Were this the last spring given me to walk
Through the low hills of my nativity,
Would every bud on the wild walnut tree
Be greener to my eyes; blacker the hawk
That circles, militant, above the dun-
Gray sage; sweeter the nectar of the bee
In honeysuckle vials; warmer to me
The tingling needle-kisses of the sun?

Were this green spring my last with burning need
To savor fully sound and scent and keep
Earth's beauty treasured, with my failing breath
Would not the sublimated senses lead
Enamored spirit -- poised for the dark leap --
Into mutation on the knees of death?





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