Let That Be the Worst of It

I move in — my house a dream

for good reason. Rooms are bright,

windows frequent, the neighborhood quiet

& familiar. Nothing is perfect, still it seems

quite sufficient — it meets, as they say,

my needs. A month passes, first secrets

revealed — rotting board, missing screen.

Small potatoes in the light of vibrant daily

dawns & satisfyingly violent thunder.

Two weeks ago the first hint

of something major — the downstairs

AC blows hot, a week later quits.

OK, verdict is the unit’s kaput.

Let that be the worst of it.

Camellia japonica courtesy of Frances

Study of Loneliness

by Czeslaw Milosz

A guardian of long-distance conduits in the desert?

The one-man crew of a fortress in the sand?

Whoever he was. At dawn he saw furrowed mountains

The color of ashes, above the melting darkness,

Saturated with violet, breaking into fluid rouge,

Till they stood, immense, in the orange light.

Day after day. And, before he noticed, year after year.

For whom, he thought, that splendor? For me alone?

Yet it will be here long after I perish.

What is it in the eye of a lizard? Or when seen by a migrant bird?

If I am all mankind, are they themselves without me?

And he knew there was no use crying out, for none of them would save him.