Kay Smith "Again with Music"

Now that the rain is spent,
Trees and the purple-headed timothy and the tall grasses
Are all netted over with seed pearls.
Far as the eye can reach the sea is pale as a pearl,
The air a pool of stillness,
And so still the wild roses their petals make porcelain faces.

From leaf to leaf a raindrop slips,
Stillness upon stillness.

And sprawling over the living grass and the roses,
A dead apple tree with beauty in its bare bones,
Never to put forth again a pink and white cloud of witnesses,
Suddenly blossoms with yellow birds in its grey limbs,
And is almost alive again with music.

Love, O love, let the birds happen to me.
Let the wild, sweet voices remember me.


North side of King Street East, mid-way between Carmarthen and Wentworth
Posted for Dr. J with best wishes.

Sue Goyette "For the Unrejoiced"

Swallows nesting in the eaves of my mother's house
have given her more joy than a roomful of daughters.
She watches them fly into morning and at dusk

welcomes their return. Every day she feels this joy.
I want a day when it's that easy to find. A day when your hand
on my hip while I sleep is enough. The need-more-

milk-and-bread words we speak into the phone
drift from the wires between us and rain,
reminders of the unrejoiced, onto our skin,

the stems holding up the flowers and the net
of bones that make up our hands. A day,
if the birds don't return, we celebrate their flight.


Northwest corner of Princess and Carmarthen