January O’Neil

Aubade

The morning walk took me

down the long path that leads

to the gate. My dog trots ahead of me

through the mowed lawn, wet with dew.

She looks for rabbits in the hedges,

an unsuspecting robin. The moon visible

in the western horizon,

while the sun makes its slow hot climb

in the opposite sky.

For now, the air is sweet and cool.

Where the road bends

I stop before the magnolia

where a single bud is in bloom:

creamy white, mouth wide as a chalice.

I’ve stopped asking

what brought me here,

stopped asking for directions.

I am not lost. I move toward

the almost-words a frog speaks

at the pond’s edge before it leaps.

I stand one-legged on a gnarled root rising

above the still surface

half-covered in pollen and algae.

Don’t say I am untouched

or unremarkable.

No one has been where I am going.

I fly with the blue heron

who takes off as soon as

she’s been discovered.

Elegy for the End of the World

after Paul Guest

For the seas, which are rising.

For the coastline: a long necklace

speckled with marinas and marshes,

bays and inlets. For sea level. Forget

for a moment the distant forecasts,

the inevitability of climate change. This

is for the gulls that wake me at 5 a.m.

with their morning complaint. No restraint

as the darkness ends. Who would miss them?

Who would notice letting go of the world

bird by bird? Show me what I’m going

to lose. For New England, for the frigid

water they say is heating up, but my toes

curled in wet sand don’t believe. For the ocean’s

ability to clap back. For the answers

staring back at us through sea foam.

For the rocky shores bearded with beach grass.

For the lighthouse at Hospital Point

overlooking Beverly Cove, a mile

from my home, and the bioluminescence

that strands itself on the rocks in late June.

For miracles as neon flecks. For a beauty

beyond beauty, beyond otherworldly,

for the shape of things to come.

Matt Morton