Fra il tonfo dei marroni
e il gemito del torrente
che uniscono i loro suoni
èsita il cuore.
Between the thud of the chestnuts
and the moaning of the stream
that unites their sounds
the heart hesitates.
Da “Bagni di Lucca” / From “The Baths at Lucca” by Eugenio Montale
The eruption has ceased,
the lava has gone
from molten to cooled,
but the heat has not
left the new land smooth.
Vesicles, large or tiny
textures, reveal
pockmarked artifacts of
subterranean gas bubbles
that made it to the surface
but never left their molten tomb.
In the next eruption
these marks will be covered over
by new similarly fossilized fellows
of air that could not escape
its rocky ferrier.
* * *
Blue, green and gold.
They say a tiger
can't change its stripes,
yet birds molt
their feathers seasonally,
and still their fashion never changes.
The male bluejay
whose flight
blends with
the clouds
and sky.
The male northern flicker
who when seen from
above
blends in with
the brown tree bark it
procures its meals from,
in flight and seen from
below, it could be mistaken
for the sun.
While both their masquerades
are kinds delight,
they do not disorient
as much as the dress
of the male and female
ruby-throated hummingbird.
As green as the leaves
she hovers over,
a red-color blind bee
fails to notice her
swift presence before
she heads back to the nest.
How she marks her
man though,
with a red swash
across the heart
that she can see
and bees cannot!
When in nature
red is not solely
the innocuous adornment
of Burns' red red rose,
but also the clear
and unforgiving signal
of the strawberry dart frog's
poisonous skin,
only a hummingbird
would delight in
her lover's red flag
that is addressed to her alone,
and is practically invisible
to their greatest fear and foe.
An open-and-closed
message invisible
only to the uninitiated
that light, but not fire,
can reveal.
* * *
Leaves are not
as smooth as they
appear, not even the
freshest shoots of
spring before they
are battered by the
elements. Like the
largest organ in the
human body, our skin,
has pores that
ferry oil and sweat
so that it too can
breathe and keep
our bodies protected, the
stomata of leaves
are responsible
for the exchange
of oxygen and
carbon dioxide,
the very air
we breathe.
Breathing in and out
when they are not
growing up or
falling down,
opening and closing
the respiration
system like a
drawbridge
between the here
and now.