The Eagle’s Mile

For a Time and Place

For a Time and Place A South Carolina inauguration of Richard Riley as governor May we be able to begin with ourselves Underfoot and rising, Peering through leaves we have basketed, through tendrils hanging Like bait, through flowers, Through lifted grave-soil: peering Past the short tree that stands In place for us, sawed-off, unbendable: a thing Pile-driven down And flowering from the impact—such weaving Consuming delicacy in the leaves, out of such Up-wedged and pineappled bark! We look alive Through those petals in the censer-swung pots: through That swinging soil, and the split leaves fountaining out Of the mauled tree, to the east horizon vibrant With whole-earth hold-down, past a single sail pillowing From there on out. We peer also from the flat Slant sand, west from estuary-glitter, From the reed-beds bending inland At dawn as we do, to the high-ground hard-hurdling Power of the down-mountain torrent: at a blue-ridged glance From the ocean, we see all we have Is unified as a quilt: the long leaves of the short tree, The tough churchly feathers, dance rice-like this side of The far-out wave-break's lounging Curved insolent long sparking thorn, and The gull's involvingbalance, his sweeping-through shuttle-run Downwind; his tapestry-move Is laid on our shoulders, where the unspilled dead Are riding, wild with flowers, collision-colors At the hairline, tended, sufficient, dead-level with us From now on out. What visions to us from all this lived Humidity? What insights from blue haze alone? From kudzu? From snake-vine?From the native dog-sized deer 38 From island to island floating, their head-bones Eternal and formal, Collisionless? We are standing mainly on blends Of sand, red-rooted, in dark Near-fever air, and there is a certain weaving At our backs, like a gull's over-the-shoulder Peel-off downwind. Assuming those wings, we keep gazing From goat-grass to the high Shifts, splits, and barreling Alcohol of the rocks, all the way from minnows flashing whole The bright brittle shallows, waiting for our momentum From here on out. It is true, we like our air warm And wild, and the bark of our trees Overlapping backward and upward Stoutly, the shocks of tough leavescounterbalancing , with a flicker of lostness. Beside the dead, The straw-sucking marsh, we have stood where every blade Of eelgrass thrilled like ahand-line For the huge bass hanging in the shade Of the sunken bush, and have heard the unstuffed moss Hiss like a laundry-iron. This point between The baskets and the tree is where we best Are, and would be: our soil, our soul, Our sail, our black horizon simmering like a mainspring, Our rocky water falling like a mountain Ledge-to-ledge naturally headlong, Unstoppable, and our momentum In place, overcoming, coming over us And from us from now on out. 39 ...