Even Before The Daylilies Have Re-opened
Even before the daylilies have re-opened,
walking home in the early morning air,
admiring the blue-green petal
of the new apple of the dawn,
Venus ferociously beautiful, and Jupiter
unusually shy by comparison as Aldebaran
fades faster in Taurus than either of them
in the onrush of light, the town immaculately quiet,
and the traffic light feeling robotically unheeded
and the bloom off the streetlamps
in the parking lot of the new hotel,
the cars immobilized in a coma of stillness,
how clean and eternal the silence seems,
how uncannily pure the bliss of life in the air,
as the birds hidden like celebrants in the trees
planted along the sidewalks, and in the black walnuts
of neglected backyards, sing as if they couldn't
contain themselves like old guitars in the corner,
or books upon a shelf, that have heard it all before.