Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BOSC PEARS, by SUSAN CONLEY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BOSC PEARS, by                    
First Line: We are committed to atoms, to their unseen ways
Subject(s): Luck


We are committed to atoms, to their unseen ways
of taking up space. But also to irrefutable luck

that gives us green tea on Wednesdays,
a half-eaten bowl of blackberries.

Luck that spills over the luck of pears
on the sideboard and yellow bananas in the blue ceramic bowl.

Luck of sweet Nellie,
newly adopted dog, and sage leaves
and wooden crucifixes.

If you give up luck, God will desert you
so the folk tale goes.

Today God may lie just beyond the plum trees.
Just beyond the rusted iron gate

to the orchard of my childhood
and the arm of reason.
He could be dangerous.

So was the planet system,
but Copernicus still said the sun was the heart
of so many lonely orbits.

If we give up luck, will we lose mystery?
Because there is a way the field out back

flames orange just after the sun wheels' last turn.

It is atomic science.
It is how these perfected forms -

three flecked eggs
two slatted chairs -

can come to seem an idea of goodness

if we're lucky enough to catch them
at dusk when they're hardly

in touch with the earth,
and we know them by longing they displace.


Copyright © Susan Conley.
http://www.wlu.edu/~shenando







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