Two Poems

Postcard from Holland

dear Orpheus, it's July
on the calendar of the living,
July with the face of a woman
in grey

for a while
faint lines of poetry
read in another life
come back to me
Bach's Variations heard
on a busy day,
the pianist's fingers -
fresh fat cloves of garlic
first mauve, then white
bloodless white
the fields lit
by buttercups at our feet
and things that blossomed
...