TAILED SONNET

 

 

 

                        Here, the sea moderates the chills

                        and fever of the continental reach.

                        In the beginning, when life inspired my ills

                        an inland beauty was bitter, idling speech,

                        summer hotter, winter colder.  The sill

                        of Johnnycake Mountain with its mean extremes

                        was known as Satan’s Kingdom, and it seemed

                        the glacier had pressed and stamped each face and will.

 

                        Halfway down was an enchanted clearing,

                        level and still, where the disused road

                        wound past ruined foundations lapped by waves

                        of roses with forgotten names.  There flowed

                        across the S-curve a shallow brook, and nearing

                        as I rode that earth-stream point that gave

                        to right and left at once and back and forth,

                        nor up nor down the mountain, I came to birth

                        into a place beyond directions, bliss

                        as if there were another world from this.