“Tell me what you feel in your room when the full moon is shining in upon you and your lamp is dying out,
and I will tell you how old you are,
and I shall know if you are happy.”~ Henri Frederic Amiel
And this is a good winter. Some rain. But there have been frosts, mostly, and clear skies, and I had my old, familiar dream of ice in the waves last night. Our house is warm. I was worried, at first, that it might not be, for its windows are huge, and the floors are more wooden than not. But we have lived through several winters in it, before this one, and we know how it is there, now-where the warmest places are. The landing; the attic room, where he paints; the kitchen, of course. It matters-for if I'm to walk about in the cold, by a wintry sea, I want to return to a house of heat, and kettles, and radio songs. And a bath to run. It's all part of it. Don't we all have our secret things?
The Armadillo
For Robert Lowell
This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars—
planets, that is—the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!—a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
