it is a rich month

Love, we are a small pond. 

In us yellow frogs take the sun. 

Their legs hang down. Their thighs open 

like the legs of the littlest children. 

On our skin waterbugs suggest incision 

but leave no marks of their strokes. 

Touching is like that. And what touch evokes. 

 

Just here the blackest berries fatten 

over the pond of our being. 

It is a rich month for putting up weeds. 

They jut like the jaws of Hapsburg kings. 

Tomorrow they will drop their blood 

as the milkweed bursts its cotton 

leaving dry thorns and tight seeds. 

 

Meanwhile even knowing 

that time comes down to shut the door 

—headstrong, righteous, time hard at the bone 

with ice and one thing more— 

we teem, we overgrow. The shelf 

is tropic still. Even knowing 

that none of us can catch up with himself 

 

we are making a run 

for it. Love, we are making a run. 

 

[Maxine Kumin {1925-2014} 'We Are', from Our Ground time Here will be Brief]