THE LESSON

(for Elizabeth Drew, in memory of her poetry seminars)

 

 

E agle-eyed Mnemosyne, mother sweet and fierce, look down on things long gone and brood upon the mountains, stoop

 

L ike hawks of home to folded hill where ice-carved tarn gives back the lidless stare of moon, and tower

 

I  n  the time of  youth; lean over sorry farm, cradle dark and sour of silence, and pass on;

 

Z oning ever lower, drop in decades ringed with years, and turn

 

A long the howling vortex where I  hear a storm of souls,

 

B lood of elemental forebears,  roar and

 

E  bb; stand still at door.

 

 

T  he lady white and small in whorls of chair

 

H olds my hooded heart enchanted on her ungloved hand; she

 

D  reams aloud in that bright house, set in ordered garden, speaks of

 

R ush of rhythmic wings that beat in time with universal song of man and planets; she

 

E  xtends her fragile arm; I climb the painted air, til clothed with hills and all the rivers in my veins,

 

W idening through realms of gold, I ride the Empyrean crowned with stars, dreaming other worlds beyond the rim.