The BOOKPRESS | February 1999 |
Before the borders
between my self
I never wanted to go
indoors
Darker year by year,
At seventy I think
with envy
—Sheldon Flory
and world were drawn,
I rose or
fell, one with pulsing
cricket
clouds or showers
of Perseid fire.
Veeries’ rinsings
fell from high
dark maples; leafmold
breathed
out, I in, its nutty
breath.
unless I could emerge
at dawn,
perhaps on fresh snow,
to lift
and brush off that
cock pheasant
a fox, scared off
by dogs, had
dropped in falling
flakes, and bundle
him home, bitten neck
stiffening.
lines close in
everywhere.
of a man who sat cross-legged
once among guttering
gorse
candles on Whinny-muir,
holding
in his lap the head
of a dying
horse. Dark nostrils
already
snuffed at Brigg o’
Dread; a probing
forehoof tapped at
planks this side,
echoing through heads
of both
horse and man.
How time must
have hung, as in childhood,
then:
so many lines undrawn.
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