(1) Airport Coffee
Shove a quick elbow
across a table dumb as we,
gather in a coffee cup and weigh,
hold heart-high and right
what blackening feeds.
Swallowing you carry on
your life’s, this time’s calling
of listening for windows:
letting on their own side
all drops fall,
nothing missing
and if I next shall see you
be cup and table
thus, be rain again
so bright my way inclined.
(2) Large-Leaf Linden
How such narrow tree
could reach me over day,
over shadows on water,
such.
Reach me where staying is
what saying becomes:
say a leaf is heart-shaped
and it is.
I remember how you called me your
leaf. Over summers and shade
sound, sense flapping.
Something it must have been you saw,
out of massed green suddenly
seeming: dim yet
exceedingly one. And what you saw
you said: what later
would reach me and does, touching
where upstairs windows weathering
accommodate the muted glint we call
recall. Knowing back I call today’s wind
recall. Knowing back I call today’s wind
toothed and it is.
--Lloyd Haft (from Atlantis, Querido 1993)