Weekly Poem: ‘September, Inverness’

By Robert Hass

Tomales Bay is flat blue in the Indian summer heat.
This is the time when hikers on Inverness Ridge
Stand on tiptoe to pick ripe huckleberries
That the deer can’t reach. This is the season of lulls —
Egrets hunting in the tidal shallows, a ribbon
Of sandpipers fluttering over mudflats, white,
Then not. A drift of mist wisping off the bay.
This is the moment when bliss is what you glimpse
From the corner of your eye, as you drive past
Running errands, and the wind comes up.
And the surface of the water glitters hard against it.

Robert Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. His books of poetry include “Time and Materials” (2007; Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner); “Sun Under Wood: New Poems” (1996); “Human Wishes” (1989); “Praise” (1979); and “Field Guide” (1973; Yale Younger Poets Series winner). Hass has also translated several volumes of poetry and is author or editor of several other collections of essays and translation, including “The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa “(1994) and “Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry” (1984).