Two Uzès poems

Uzès I: Gauze

Mistral in the one big tree
blows like rushing water.
Sunlight shares out sky and clouds.

Water can be found in the sky;
and air underground. All
things blended. So: gauze

is half cloth and half atmosphere
each woven in the other; like
lungs stitching air into blood.


Uzès II: Zest

1.
Sunwebs on the swimmingpool floor
shudder as if blown by
underwater breezes. Dive into

the shimmer net; you won't
snag in its mesh.
Because light is atoms,

as water is, as stone,
White atoms. A fictitious cleanness
here washed doubly clean.

2.
Out she climbs from the pool,
dripping on hot stone flags,
the sound of fat frying.

Zest. The sun’s
glare. Chlorine in my eyes,
the white rush of the wind

rummaging in the leaves of the
fat-headed sycamores, making a noise
exactly like a shower of rain.