It is morning because the sun has risen.
I wake slowly in the early heat,
Picked berries from the thorny vines.
They are deep red,
sugar-heavy fuzzed with dust.
The eucalyptus casts a feathered shadow
on the house, which gradually withdraws.
After breakfast
you will swim and I am going to read
that hard man Thomas Hobbes
on the causes of the English civil wars.
There are no women in his world,
Hobbes, brothers fighting brothers
over goods.
I
see you in the late afternoon
your hair dry-yellow, plaited
from the waves, a faint salt sheen
across our belly and along your arms.
The kids bring from the sea
Intricate calcium gifts---
black turbans, angular green whelks,
the whorled opalescent unicorn.
We may or may not
feel some irritation at the dinner hour.
The first stars, and after dark
Vega hangs in the lyre,
The Dipper tilts above the hill.
Traveling
in Europe Hobbes was haunted by motion.
Sailing or riding, he was suddenly aware
that all things move.
We will lie
down,
finally, in our heaviness
and touch and drift towards
morning.
Robert Hass
The Apple Trees at Olema
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