Crombie+Favorite

By Amy Lowell
 * A Fixed Idea**

What torture lurks within a single thought When grown too constant; and however kind, However welcome still, the weary mind Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught Remembers on unceasingly; unsought The old delight is with us but to find That all recurring joy is pain refined, Become a habit, and we struggle, caught. You lie upon my heart as on a nest, Folded in peace, for you can never know How crushed I am with having you at rest Heavy upon my life. I love you so You bind my freedom from its rightful quest. In mercy lift your drooping wings and go.


 * 

Under the Vulture-Tree ** By David Bottoms  We have all seen them circling pastures, have looked up from the mouth of a barn, a pine clearing, the fences of our own backyards, and have stood amazed by the one slow wing beat, the endless dihedral drift. But I had never seen so many so close, hundreds,

every limb of the dead oak feathered black,

and I cut the engine, let the river grab the jon boat and pull it toward the tree. The black leaves shined, the pink fruit blossomed red, ugly as a human heart. Then, as I passed under their dream, I saw for the first time its soft countenance, the raw fleshy jowls wrinkled and generous, like the faces of the very old who have grown to empathize with everything.

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river, reluctant, looking back at their roost, calling them what I'd never called them, what they are, those dwarfed transfiguring angels, who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle crushed on the shoulder of the road, who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost, with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.