HOME / poem: A weekly poem, read by the author.

Augury

By Ellen WehlePosted Wednesday, July 23, 2003, at 12:11 PM ET

Listen to Ellen Wehle reading this poem.

Laugh if you want, when the fortune teller
told me to "take a new road" I took
her at her word, turned
a block from home and found it
waiting: gabled night, the secret trees
spilling darkness around streetlights, blown roses
singing hosannas over a fence.

Don't get me wrong, nothing was solved.

I walked, a cat cried at my passing,
grave old oaks
watched. I knew myself
not. Say, How can we help it—this waterwheel
of our days, each day a bucket
bound in copper rings and dripping, each
bucket a hand, cupping sky? Who knows what

I knew. Moon open as a gate.

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Ellen Wehle's book of poems is The Ocean Liner's Wake. She lives outside Chicago and is completing her first novel.

Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.

To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES