From the Undergrowth
        —after Akhmatova

New roses flush in the serein
as a black cat stretches

just short of the heavy rake
with its uncertain lean—Good luck

like the glimpse of a jewel in the sand,
for anything about to happen, but not

tied to a load of bricks, a wall of questions
requiring of her a vision.

She thinks reserve brings the cries of love
nearer-to-hand, rooted.

Whose voice beside the cricket's
in the lavish growth of wild ivy and sunset

makes her drowsy, lucid with faith again?
Whose virtue made sooth inside her?

Credence sinks for the night ahead.
A slivered moon spools waves with the wind.

The subtlest pearl, hers alone.

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Copyright © 2011 Jeannine Savard All rights reserved
from Accounted For
Red Hen Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission