On Reading Archie Again

 

Were you not built to bear

The winter and the wind

That blows on the hill here?

   Archibald MacLeish, "Chartres"

 

 

  

Summer and the lowest branch of the nearest pine

Finally lifting again to just past horizontal, the tip

Still brown needles but the tight cone buds green,

Sill the slow seep of sap where, not quite broken,

It is hanging on to the trunk, the bark healing

Itself into a scar ants come to and cannot leave.

Last winter late snow bowed the branch until it

Touched the ground and then ice pinned it there

And through a week of cold I could hear the wind,

The creak and crack of tension and contention,

The crunch of my feet through the ice to where

I shattered it around the branch tip and needles,

Scattering shards of light on gray drifts of snow

And lifting the weight of winter from both of us.

 





Poetry by countryfog
Read 647 times
Written on 2015-07-23 at 04:24

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Jamsbo Rockda The PoetBay support member heart!
Wonderful. You have a knack of capturing each small detail with such grace of writing. Like the ants we read and do not want to leave.
2015-07-26


Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Good work, Fog. The poem is well-written, and, I have to say it, uplifting.
2015-07-24



This, too, is delightful, my friend :-)
It's always wonderful to read your close descriptions of nature; and the healing element to this piece is beautifully rendered. I love the detail of the ants and sap, the sound of 'creak and crack', the internal rhyme of 'tension and contention' – and most of all, the care taken to allow for the final lifting. Applause!
2015-07-23



I sometimes miss winter--those here are very short and mild, no snow, no ice. Like all the other yin and yang, one intensifies the other: winter makes summer seem sweeter and summer makes winter vivid and potent and beautiful.

I have to say, though, that I don't miss slipping and sliding on my drive to work--never knowing whether I'd end up in a ditch or on a hospital bed. Still, I'm glad I lived many years in the north--evergreens bent with snow are still with me, in my mind and in my imagination. And now through your poems.
2015-07-23


josephus The PoetBay support member heart!
A wonderful caring poem that defines the shepherd relationship humanity must have with nature. I prefer "shepherd" to "steward" in that it's a more loving sentiment as you have so wondrously shown here.
2015-07-23