What We Would Become

Treasure

Finding the photograph among boxeswe’d packed and stored away some years ago,we thought the context lost, as move on movewe filled our homes with goods that were our lives.It showed us smiling at Niagara Falls,youthfully larking through Dominion Day,our thoughts turned liquid in the water’s flowas if lost in the rush of the descentand pulled back to our selves by friendly ties.The feeling was like what, as a small child,we’d felt appealing to St. Anthony,his statue holding one rib of the church,and finding a lost lucky friend returned.We took it as a gift to memoryfrom greater forces waiting to be tapped,the water’s drenching spray and constant roarapproval of the course our life would cut.Smiling, you slipped it back where it had been.

An Autumn Day

You asked to see the park while you were hereand grab a bit of summer while we could,reversing the season’s moves toward winter.So, we packed lunch and a store of wine—perfect to cut the early autumn chillthat kept the usual crowds from visiting—and sneaked them past the guards at the gate.“Thank God,” you uttered, “no arrests were made,” and driving, found a table off the road,hidden by oaks still sporting summer’s leafand open to the babble of the fallsrepeating ancient secrets to the air.Relaxed, you started on our teenage scrapes,building to the delight in smuggling wine,then ambled over to a tree.You planted a small coin beside its base,saying, “I’ll come back one day and make claim.Till then, the Falls has one more tale to spill.”

Divisions

You write that birds have nested in your eavesusing dead grass and twigs and rotted leafthey’d managed to collect from nearby lawns,and settled, laid their eggs and await their young—unlike us settled in this terminal,waiting to quit the shards of a shelled home,focused on our saved lives in coming through.Near to the gate, a restless six-year olddarts past the mess of meager salvages,inside his hand, a miniature airplane.“No holding him,” we think. “He’s taking off.”Finally, a call to board a ready flight,and we queue up for check before we board.An iPod’s “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore”pierces the shock that’s shut the wide world off.We’d rather “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

American Pastoral

For weeks we’d put off coming to this showof paintings from the Hudson River School,the straw, a card from friends touring the West,visiting sites we’d visited beforewhen we were seeking what we would become—Bryce, Grand Canyon, Zion National Park,Cathedral Rock depicted on its front.It was as if the card set off a matchbetween art and memories of nature—the large-scale canvasses of bygone wilds,green woodlands, rills, and misty waterfalls,meant once to symbolize Edenic grace,now compromised by roads and urban sprawlfor sentimental musings on the past;and our impressions of rock and canyons,free of the backhoes of developers,magnificent against a cloudless skyopen to thought unfettered in its range.

Choral Song

As if the cuttings gave them birth,the flowers cradled at your breastsignal a closeness to the earththe choral song makes manifest.Not Antaeus, whose might was gotkeeping his two feet on the ground.The power’s of a different sort,the music of a different sound.Your song’s the very stuff of dreamand means by which the living live,its wisdom seeded in each bloom:“What’s freely got as freely give.”

For a Would-be Muse

Forests no longer hear his lossand shed their leaves in sympathy,nor flights of birds desert the skyand Dis suspend his mortal laws.Turned suddenly from flesh to songby that one act of looking back,you’ll hold the pages of a bookwith other tales of...