Rocky flatland bows
To a wild, willful wind
Spasmodic clumps of green
Hot yellow sun burns
I saw a bird with injured wing
ride home: a slow and troubled flight
of feathered heart
I marveled that so sweetly brave
the damaged bird could rise again
to tree-life height
while my faint heart with wounded wings
lay pained and still
Then came upon the solemn air
a vibrant trill
as though the homeward bird had sent
its song to me
that I might find a haven, too,
my own high tree
What is it that waits there
there in the shadows of the wings?
Silently, patiently, waiting the cue,
the time to creep, or stride,
upon the stage of my play
I go on, guided by the words and music
of my dreams, my time upon the stage
but again and again, my mind and heart,
(the eyes of my searching)
peer into the shadows of the wings
wondering, marveling,
What is it that waits there?
The little widow with her head held high
Determined to be brave and not to cry
But as I embraced her my own tears showed
For I knew in her heart the silent tears flowed
It was not sudden
the awakening from famine and fatigue
but rather a slow awareness
that bright faces
(miniature suns with yearning eyes)
peered into the windows
at the darkened room;
their gold glances piercing
laser lances spotlighting whorls
of dust and neglect
I felt familiar shapes
long slumped in repose
in shadowed places
emerge
assuming postures of new design
The desert room
no longer indistinct and gray
alight with the searching beams
began to flower:
dust-devils danced
in prismatic maze
I knew
(the wild surprise of it!)
that I had only to open the door
for they had come to remind me
that I, too, am one of
the golden children of the sun
Long ago
–almost unremembered
but not quite—
Someone called
Inside:
the sheltered room
closed and warm and safe
Outside:
the winter night
cold, black, insistent
Ice—stillness and depth-ache
And then
the muffled call, far-off:
Margaret Margaret
I waited
heart-poised
vigilant
It never came again
Time passed
–a river flowing toward the sea—
Now
Removed by years and other yearnings
I wonder:
Why did I
hear that muffled call:
Margaret Margaret
From the cold still winter night
We wait
Through long and yearning years
For discovering kiss,
The awakening.
Dreaming within forested castles,
We wait;
Aware, yet unaware,
That only the gleam
Of towers and turrets can be seen
Above the green and guardian leaves.
From the hushed dark waters
of the river at night
a murmur rises:
How lonely!
Past the high hollow laughter
of the vagrant crowd
a whisper surprises:
How lonely!
In the mind’s deep caverns
an echo resounds
at every crisis:
How lonely!
I tried to write myself
into the river,
but the river instead
wrote itself into me.
She turned always
to a sun of long ago—
a memory of something
perhaps that was never so
exactly what she insisted to recall—
and though
the sun of that memory shed
some overcast of color,
there emanated from the petals
a too-rich scent
an insidious hint
that deep into the roots,
invisible
there sullied and spread
the wasting,
a draining of life to death
He turned always
to her—she was his sun—
and though
he did not flower
as he might have done
in the fullness of real sunlight
his blossoms, lacking glow,
were pale but sturdy
and smiled
almost content to be shadowed so
From root-base of love, a bright
stream coursed upward for him
in a steady, life-giving flow