Recovery, By A. R. AMMONS

All afternoon

the tree shadows, accelerating,

lengthened

till

sunset

shot them black into infinity:

next morning

darkness

returned from the other

infinity and the

shadows caught ground

and through the morning, slowing,

hardened into noon.

Their Sex Lives

One failure on

Top of another

From “The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons” (W. W. Norton: $17.95). 1990 by A. R. Ammons. Reprinted with permission.