Ian Parks
On a cold New England afternoon
Blue shadows in the snow,
a frozen stream, a stricken pine
extending one bare arm
across the wilderness
that lies between my window
and the neighbouring farm;
the road to Boston
last night's blizzard closed,
a lone wolf howling
at the timberline - and me
remembering why I came
into this shifting landscape
drained of light: a cornice
suspended, waiting to invade
the still day with its fall.
Up there, on Constitution Hill -
where all the Union dead
are stored - a priest looks out
from his clap-board house
on what the whiteness has redeemed,
tries hard but cannot bless it.
For the couple who have chosen this
until the day they die
who sometimes holler, sometimes wave,
and stock their logs up high
against the cabin door,
this is the one experiment
in life that hasn't failed.
A month out here
has taught me what it's like
to long for their dream
and still not make it real;
to ache for the world
and not possess it.
a frozen stream, a stricken pine
extending one bare arm
across the wilderness
that lies between my window
and the neighbouring farm;
the road to Boston
last night's blizzard closed,
a lone wolf howling
at the timberline - and me
remembering why I came
into this shifting landscape
drained of light: a cornice
suspended, waiting to invade
the still day with its fall.
Up there, on Constitution Hill -
where all the Union dead
are stored - a priest looks out
from his clap-board house
on what the whiteness has redeemed,
tries hard but cannot bless it.
For the couple who have chosen this
until the day they die
who sometimes holler, sometimes wave,
and stock their logs up high
against the cabin door,
this is the one experiment
in life that hasn't failed.
A month out here
has taught me what it's like
to long for their dream
and still not make it real;
to ache for the world
and not possess it.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The