Two poems from Angie Estes' Tryst:

Take Cover

and couvre feu, cover the fire
because when the bell sounds, it means
curfew, it is mellow-drama, facsimile
of a tryst, trusted
meeting place, waiting
like a shelter or decoy, duck blind
with the perfect vision
of the Venetian blind; a number of thin
horizontal slats that may be raised
or lowered with one cord, all set
at a desired angle. Love too we're told
is blind, but desire,
as Aristotle knew, is all
angle, and so he gave us the math
to keep track of our loves: Number,
he said, has two senses: what is counted
or countable, and that by which
we count. Remember
to cover the rosemary in winter, uncover
the basil before the sun
comes up, and when you take
cover, cover your head with your hands
and forearms, as we learned in school, once
you have crouched under
your desk. In January, beneath the roof
of the house, a sparrow curves
in the scroll of a corbel, and soon
at Carnevale a mask will be held
at half-mast like the lid
of a casket before it lies under
the grass. How much ground
have you covered
today? You always take
all the covers, it's true. But do not
take cover under a tree
during a storm--your body will lift
its wick to light, and you will gleam
like Venus just before dawn: a satellite
in the atelier where true
and tree are related, unable to choose
between heaven and earth, to make seems
come true.

Gloss

My mother said that Uncle Fred had a purple
heart, the right side of his body
blown off in Italy in World War II,
and I saw reddish blue figs
dropping from the hole
in his chest, the violet litter
of the jacaranda, heard the sentence
buckle, unbuckle like a belt
before opening the way
a feed sack opens all
at once when the string is pulled
in just the right place:
the water in the corn pot
boils, someone is slapped, and summer
rain splatters as you go out
to slop the hogs. We drove home
over the Potomac while the lights spread
their tails across the water, comets
leaving comments on a blackboard
sky like the powdered sugar
medieval physicians blew
into patients' eyes to cure
their blindness. At dusk,
fish rise, their new moons
etching the water like Venn diagrams
for Robert's Rules of Order
surfaced at last, and I would like to
make a motion, move
to amend: point of information, point
of order. I move to amend
the amendment and want
to call the question, table
the discussion, bed
some roses, and roof the exclamation
of the Great Blue heron sliding
overhead, its feet following flight
the way a period haunts
a sentence: she said that
on the mountain where they grew
up, there were two kinds
of cherries--red heart
and black heart--both of them
sweet.  ¶ 10:47 AM