Poem After a Line by Simone Weil
by Patricia Wallace
The soul has to go on loving or at least wanting to love
(Simone Weil)
So we say yes to the morning sky’s
bolt of silk, the blue
lining of the Madonna’s cloak, and yes
to the bare trees
candled with light, even yes to the stones
recently dug from the old
retaining wall, glowing as if ocean-
washed although far
from any ocean. Around them leaves
scatter, snow-coated into swells
like waves, as if the desert dreams
of the water once covering it.
Mid-afternoon, yearning walks
us into light-tangled trees,
wands of river grass bending
in flares. Some left-over leaves
still snapped to their Cottonwoods
clatter as if they clapped
for beauty. The shock of it.
And we simply waiting,
not knowing what to ask.
(Simone Weil)
So we say yes to the morning sky’s
bolt of silk, the blue
lining of the Madonna’s cloak, and yes
to the bare trees
candled with light, even yes to the stones
recently dug from the old
retaining wall, glowing as if ocean-
washed although far
from any ocean. Around them leaves
scatter, snow-coated into swells
like waves, as if the desert dreams
of the water once covering it.
Mid-afternoon, yearning walks
us into light-tangled trees,
wands of river grass bending
in flares. Some left-over leaves
still snapped to their Cottonwoods
clatter as if they clapped
for beauty. The shock of it.
And we simply waiting,
not knowing what to ask.
Patricia Wallace is a writer and educator who splits her time between the equally beautiful and very different landscapes of Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Hudson Valley in New York. Some of her poems and essays have appeared in River Heron, Bosque, PEN America, The Iowa Review, and The Columbia History of American Poetry.