A Brief History of Time
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It’s a chilly morning, a curl of iceon the window, a solitary squirrelmoving
gingerly across the frost-dull grass,burying acorns. Is this his lastchance?
Snow is forecast. Winter is onthe calendar’s next page. The groundwill freeze.
Such agonies of effort time drivesus to! My neighbor squirrel and Itogether
know what’s ahead: a future allobscure, weathers none can predict,real dangers.
And so we do whatever we can thinkto; by purpose, by animal instinct,we contend
with the world we live in, we hideand keep our necessary food—the squirrel’s
the acorns from a scarlet-leaved oak;mine, a thousand memories lockedin my thought. [End Page 366]
We hug our secrets. We trust bleakwinters will end, blue clouds breakfor sunlight.
Patience and hope: the hardest wordsthe heart can bear. We do our best,the squirrel and I.
We look forward. We learn to survive.We study when to unearth our savedsweet pleasures.
for Donald Hall [End Page 367]
ROBLEY WILSON has published three poetry collections, most recently Everything Paid For (University Press of Florida). His novella, Teresa Frechette, appears in the current Santa Monica Review.
