Classic Poem

I called you because I could not stand alone
looking north to that skyline-
tree globed with its yellow apples
balancing like a fountain of planets
in the bright light and the blue air.

And because on the way there
I looked at a smooth cirque
the brook had worn in a stone;
and nothing as soft as water
could, by taking care,
have so pestled and polished
that granite mortar; only
by a thousand years of indifference,
of aiming elsewhere.

I wish we might do — or no,
look back and find we had done —
some un-advertized thing,
overwhelming and un-self-aware
as water streamlining a stone, or a tree's
kindling in an empty meadow
its casual Hesperides.











By permission of the author.