SOLAR COOKING, SIERRA
Somewhere in Zaire a woman places dinner
in a blackened pot between geometric silver
flanges like a good knight’s armor.
The sun will pass, as it always does,
directly over. Dinner will be done.
I paid for this, and for her sisters
in Somalia, Gabon. They needn’t parse
equatorial desert for the twigs to purify
water, cook their meals. My long-distance
charity helps to set them free.
The same should apply for me. This morning
I placed pinto beans in a black pot
between cleverly engineered flanges. Clouds
lidded over, the sun grew hedgy.
In and out of shadow, a summer day
at this latitude, this altitude. All day,
the beans stay edgy, half-cooked.
But in time I’ll learn the art of cooking
beans as well as the sun does, patiently
turning as the earth does, as I myself
do, inside an unfinished skin.
N’AUBADE
When daylight reaches the sleeping room
you rise and walk along the dripping path,
the long hem of a wooden fence that skirts
the stream. And just then, what comes
to block the little of yourself that woke
this morning? Kisses. No, kisses live
in imaginary palaces and die of suffocation
in the night. Only the idea of a kiss,
in all its lovely repetitions, trails
you along the weeping path like a friend
who loves to taunt you.
FREE
At the strung-out end
of a day too blurred
to describe
as satisfactory, or
to blame outright
turn
the lights out, open
windows wide to a breeze
and this night’s
moonlit
tapestry of leaves.