THE ROUND
Light splashed this morning
On the shell-pink anemones
Swaying on their tall stems;
Down blue-spiked veronica
Light flowed in rivulets
Over the humps of the honeybees;
This morning I saw light kiss
The silk of the roses
In their second flowering,
My late bloomers
Flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
So I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
So I am sitting in semi-dark
Hunched over my desk
With nothing for a view
To tempt me
But a bloated compost heap,
Steamy old stinkpile,
Under my window;
And I pick my notebook up
And I start to read aloud
The still-wet words I scribbled
On the blotted page:
"Light splashed..."
I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
When a new life begins for me,
As it does each day,
As it does each day.
Stanley Kunitz