Aperture
with thanks to Ikkyu Sojun
And I said, the moon is a house.
It was the eclipse and we lay outside on the chaise lounge
while the sun turned from a thumbnail sketch to a mouth’s
swooping smile then to sliver, and we wondered
where we’d be twenty-one years from now. Whether we’d see
another one. Shadows from the garden chairs cast
diamond patterns on the slate, and clouds drifted.
For a few moments, a bit of darkness. We had expected
no movement from spectators; yet bees came to the blue phlox.
A group of ants edged along the rock wall,
and a school bus made its way down
the sloping hill. We wondered if they knew
our trajectory when we lay completely inert
and let the Sun take over.
The horses are whickering
and they stand spattered,
even eyelids covered in mud
the barn’s floor a river,
we do not know their names.
The donkeys stamp and bray
thinking it could be their turn,
then decide they know more
in silence.
Paddock in hillocks,
and we pull all manner of field
from hooves. Ice crystals pool off
whiskers and when I hold
the beautiful animal close to my chest,
something passes through me
and the present with the past
seem a continuum.
With coats dark with sheen, we sense
how good our lust for wonder
that we exist at all.
Abundance
When sour cherries ripen
full in the orchard
on Sugarland Road, I take
all morning among
heavy branches, filling
my buckets, thinking
this will be the last one, sliding
handfuls of tart flesh
into my mouth; my shirt
stains pink, a talisman. In wet
fields and dark rivers, under
trees, the life there is, moves.
Summer Hardinge lives near the Potomac River in Maryland. She is the first place winner of the 2024 Ron Rash Poetry Contest for “Contents of Lincoln’s Pockets,” published in Broad River Review. Her work appears in Stonecoast Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. Summer received the 2019 First Place in the Poetry Contest sponsored by Bethesda Urban Partnership. A former high school English teacher, she leads Amherst Writers and Artists workshops in the Washington D.C. area. Visit her website.
Featured Image: “Aperture in a lens” by Gaurav Dhwaj Khadka under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
