Poem for 8/24/21

 MORNING GLORY

Henri Cole (1956-) 

(Click the poet’s name to see an interview with him in The Paris Review)

Out my window, in a garden the size of an urn,

a morning glory is climbing toward me.

It is five a.m. on the ninth day of the seventh month.

Lying on my soft mats, like a long white rabbit,

I can feel the purifying flames of summer

denuding the landscape, not of birds and animals,

but of blame and illusion. I can hear the white

splashing rivers of forgetfulness and oblivion

soaking me all at once, like loving a man

without wanting him, or a baby emerging

under white light out of its mother,

not the artificial light of the hospital corridor

but of joy growing wild in the garden, its pallid blue

trumpets piercing a brocade of red leaves.

from Poems of Healing, ed. Karl Kirchwey (New York, 2021), 176.