The Village
It has taken this time for the old paths
to be revealed and then only
in memory. There are trackways under
the new houses, that mark the deaths
of those who died lonely
in places that stare back. It is the earth’s
secret, waiting there like tinder.
When I first saw the village, sun splattered
it like paint; at night, sugar mist
spun across its fields. But what I see now
are the old paths before the tired
words lost their shape. I must
know them again, before the unwanted
dreams return or next year’s buds show.
And that is why, in the wind, I await
the mild applause of trees, the leaves
like the accumulation of each small
unhappiness on the dry, late
autumn ground. For the loves
lost where the old paths once led would tell it
differently now, if at all.
That is all I know: the things that shiver
in another time, the water
reflecting them in the rife. But to tread
the old paths would be to give an ear
to it all, each feature,
and when confronting the stranger, never
to know if the gun were loaded.
Page(s) 11
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