THE BLISS OF SOLITUDE

7 1 R T H E B L I S S O F S O L I T U D E J U L I A N G E W I R T Z A Poet could not but be gay In such a laughing company . . . – William Wordsworth In my left hand he was a burning rope. All day long this air was thin as the smile of quartered mangoes or the glow of his skin in my nightlight – And all day long I was speaking past tall wheat to the sycamore tree in the perpetually blue field I remember a boy climbing up hollering as the sky filled from the top with that dark sinking like cold smoke into the city Tonight the meadow is laughing again while a kit of jacobins mulls in wire cages sleeping inside the fantails of their collars and in that garden an old man in his green silk pajamas stitched with fishermen angling silver rivers wraps his arms around the moonlight falling on a thin wool blanket – Waxing moon, half-weighted hammock. ...