Poppies

This is a year of poppies: our land

was brimming with them as May burned

into June and I returned—

a sweet dark wine that made me drunk.

From clouds of mulberry to grains to grasses

ripeness was all, in the fitting

heat, in the slow drowsiness spreading

through the universe of green.

My life half over I saw grown sons

setting off alone and vanishing from sight

beyond the prison the flight

of the swallow makes in the spent

glow of a stormy evening, but the pain

gave way humanely to the light

coming on inside the house for another meal

in air made cooler by hail

letting off steam in the distance.