[R. Nemo Hill]

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Canopy

The sun wanes now
and now the blue of the sky
deepens to disrepair

as overhead
color condenses
and crumbles,

light gambles
and loses
and tumbles

sighing
through these trees
whose green gown grays,

fumbles its own shadow
of a garment
and bares one shoulder,

one wooden limb whitened
by the promise
of a moon arriving.

The ground vanishes.
And the sky dissolves
beyond all that heaves—

this ghostly appetite of leaves,
this splash of green insomnia,
this borderless canopy of trees

rattling the pulse
of tireless pollen
in a dark wind.

All heaven seethes
and it will not sleep,
all muscles ever-stirring,

all cells aghast,
all sap at every moment
re-occurring.


(1985—Point Baptiste, Dominica)
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