There was a busyness. Yes, in the apple tree.
The first light. You could say it was a busyness—
like a hive of movements, indistinct as haze
caught up in strings of light. Low sunlight, among webs.
And along the strands those slender brown fingerlings,
the leaves, hovered, just there, in the breeze.
2.
What I meant to say is the morning was heavy.
Was it our sorrow. The tree was at the window.
Before we could see the webs, the dew, the thousand
little apples, we saw the end of it only. The night, yes—
the end of it. There is always something else to say.
No, I mean the first light. There’s far too much to say.
3.
Low sunlight. Yes, in the apple tree, coming up.
Every day is the anniversary of a terror.
But there you are. A sorrow. And something
caught there dazzling in the haze, just the same. Yes.
And of this moment closer to you than I can say.
There was busyness in the apple tree.
4.
First I thought it just a slim leaf, hanging
to the screen. On the door. The night was settled.
Darkness inside, darkness out. Then the wings
half-closed like hands, or a clasp. I mean, of a jewel.
Dust of a moth, half a palm wide, and the crickets
a busy tide at the seashore, when this was a sea.
5.
In the morning, the moth was gone. Or was it silence.
Every day the image at the window—us, each other,
wings on the door. Yes, can you say it now.
Before the webs we saw first light, a breath of haze—
then leaves, floating there. In the window, yes. We saw
ourselves. Then we saw ourselves with shadows.
By David Baker
Published in The New Yorker, November 1, 2021
