A LA RECHERCHE

 

 

                                    I know that time has passed.  My hair

                                    is faded, and the drawers are crammed

                                    with old letters.  The evening air

                                    is perfumed by other gardens, and

 

                                    I sit and swipe half-heartedly

                                    at Dickinson’s persistent fly.

                                    When I was no taller than this sea

                                    of flowers, there was a green sky

 

                                    above a rainbow-spattered view;

                                    it was a town of flowers.  That truth

                                    now the field is underfoot

                                    is gone with the girl I was and her youth.

 

Yet though the woods have grown back through

                                    the cast-off harrow, and a tree

now drives the wagon, stone walls hew

these woods to fields of former years.

 

A vanished glacier plucked the front

from hills and drew the valley’s face.

It is here and not here.  Hunt

for it; it is in a special place.

 

The past and the future are borne in the hour;

those who know when they will die

just have less future in them – for

you can’t step in the same high

 

water twice, but you can again.

When my arms are full of light,

I can feel instead a warm, round hen,

sleek silky feathers stuffed with life,

 

with beating and clucking, this ball of meat

bursting with life and eggs.  My fingers

in the sun are full of a neat

brown piece of pretty life that lingers,

 

having perished these fifty years.

(They say the science of the soul

is the new faith; what drives our tears                           

is never lost, just cubbyholed.

 

The fallacy was to determine

what should be recalled at last;

the weather of trends secures their preferment.)

Now a dark horse canters past

 

the flower’s tropism, in and out

of seasons, under bare branches bathed

in rosy light and hung about

with tinkling crystals, through a swathe

 

fragrant with hay, the footfalls soft

upon fields of childhood’s vanished farm

and down the broad green valley of far-off

school days, clattering over the charmed

 

pavements of towering cities, a babble

of tongues on the air, whispering like wind.

There falls a stillness after the rabble

of clamorous scenes and stories, skin

 

cooled as the gravel road underfoot

rises, dips and winds among

the heavy-shouldered boulders, brutes

asleep on the floor of the forest, flung

 

by the genius of the ice playing

a game of statues.  The soft mane

brushes the backs of my hands, swaying

in cadence with hoofbeats measured refrain,

 

pounding out numbers, blood keeping time,

its song in my ears as the light fades;

the rider aware alone of the ride

gallops on among the gathering shades.