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Poetry
Poems
IMPROMPTU PERFORMANCE
We stop by the barn’s wide doorway,
which opens, darkly, to the day,
to hear a poem,
my friends and I.
Visions of fields and bees and wild boar
in the woods; the quiet roar
of a sea of leaves;
the harvest sky;
the bright red beehives hidden away
where the trees’ green becomes grey;
the afternoon gloom;
all pass by
as we listen, by the barn’s dark door,
piling high our ‘come winter’ store:
of words, of phrases;
of barley, rye.
BEGINNING AT THE END
for Lisa Peter
Beginning at the end, we closed the gate,
and no one saw us as we walked away;
the path ran on ahead, it would not wait.
A stream roared quietly across the slate,
its noisy silence cutting through the day.
Beginning at the end, we closed the gate.
A dipper said that we had come too late,
dark light refracting in the water’s spray.
The path ran on ahead, it would not wait.
And new wood turned to ashes in the grate
of cold, late afternoon, a warm decay.
Beginning at the end, we closed the gate
and found, in walking, how to replicate
the heart’s uncertain finding of its way.
The path ran on ahead, it would not wait.
Even the rooks were quiet, to demonstrate
that sometimes love is what we do not say.
Beginning at the end, we closed the gate.
The path ran on ahead, it would not wait.
TWO BOYS
Forgot the boy I once adored,
aged ten. An army family, his,
That first forgetting did not hurt
at all. I once, then never, spoke
I saw him in my head five days
ago; a wet, cold spring, and yet,
on his blond hair, on my tanned limbs
as we dangled from the swing
for an afternoon. But afterwards
is as empty as the park was when