Walking Summer
I've been here before
too long ago, too short a time--
encircled by this walking summer,
where song is never done, where walls
are built from air and touch, where invisible
love strolls in, the unexpected fragrance
of
mimosa thrown like gauze across her face,
pollened with invincible yesterdays,
intricate and insubstantial as
the manual labor of a rose.
I know this place
so clean, so far, so obvious--
this moving room where nothing
was ever allowed to stay, yet a
wayward welcome whistles in the
nag of wind that blows my steps this way
to thin path's end, where sun is made
and broken in a day,
a dropped brick like me, once high,
ruined in a cobble of clouds.
These skewered eyes
so still, so heart's-desired when
I stole them from the chimera,
open starry wide at lastto blink up the mist, the mazed
particulate of missing pieces that
mortar so well with tears the
pressed-together whole, and I
wonder if there soon could be
a granting of what's needful;
for I only hope to
find the lost--
the
tilted corners of a child's smile
the absence of regret, the whim
of walking summer that clings
like mimosa gauze to
the shifting faces of my ghosts.
~November 2015
(" finding comfort in the beauty around us, whether it is as vast as the
sky or as small as a dew-covered spider-web, on a cornstalk by the back
fence in the early morning.")
Photos: Mimosa, © joyannjones 2014
Rosa 'Nearly Wild,' © joyannjones 2015
Gah. This is so beautiful, Hedge. You took me on that summer walk, the scent of mimosa, the thin path's end, the cobble of clouds. Just perfect. I long for "the granting of what's needful" and love the last stanza, especially your closing lines. Thanks so much for linking to my prompt. Your poem is a beauty.
ReplyDeleteHeavens, what barrens our desperate hours would be without the soft faint touch of the day - "so clean, so far, so obvious" - which will survive us? Hope is far back of Pandora's jar, its own chimera, but the surrendered eye can find it (here) -- in "the walking summer that clings / like mimosa gauze to / the shifting faces of my ghosts." Fine stuff, Hedge.
ReplyDeleteOh, goodness! In my crusty, stone-hearted dotage, it takes a lot to bring me to tears but this poem did. Wow. I feel as though my heart has been shaken by an invisible wave. How is it possible that I do not remember this poem at all? I hesitate to quote back on such a poem, so I'll just say that although the entire thing is first rate, from the dropped brick on it's rare work indeed, even for you. The bar has retired to a rest home.
ReplyDeleteSide note: the "moving room" reminded me of something I heard yesterday about the actor and singer Richard Harris, a notorious drinker. When police found him lying in the road and asked him what he was doing, he replied, "Waiting for my house to happen by."
Such a beautiful poem. A glorious hymn to the summers of memory and those days when all is right with the world. It's winter here in Oz right now and a wild storm is gusting past my house. Reading your poem reminded me that nature can also be gentle even if, these days, it seems that magic is lost.
ReplyDeleteJoy, this is exquisite. A wonderful sensation of peacefulness invaded my body as I read .. 'the whim of walking summer that clings like mimosa gauze to the shifting faces of my ghosts.' Oh my.
ReplyDelete