Into My Life

 

If words could hold this world

They would bend themselves to one    

Transparency.

        Henry Rago, “The Knowledge of Light”

 

 

  

So often all these years I have come to say

The same words: woods and pines, fields

And pastures, streams and stones, hawks

And horses, arrival and departure. as though

Recitation and repetition were the only way

To poems, past and presence.  Perhaps now

They are no more than the usual affliction

Of old age, a way of counting and recounting

The years and how it was that all the passages

Through them have led to here, to the few

Places that have not changed but changed

A long life, coming nearer the end of it now,

Knowing now it has never been the words

That mattered but the gestures and revelations

Of each place as it was and yet is, beginning

Now in the sudden silence of rain stopping,

Light and shadow on the still spring stream,

Following hoof prints along the muddy bank,

Ending somewhere to be arrived at again

And again; the transcending leap of faith

Of a deer crossing the clearing and into my life.





Poetry by countryfog
Read 1109 times
Written on 2015-09-06 at 16:43

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Jamsbo Rockda The PoetBay support member heart!
But I always enjoy how you write of nature. It's like your poetic super-power. There would be nothing better for a life entering its autumn years than to be imbued with the living world. It is much better than regrets and pointless analysis of the past :) Great as always.
2015-09-12


Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Some words are absolutely magical. These are

the sudden silence of rain stopping,
Light and shadow on the still spring stream,
Following hoof prints along the muddy bank,
Ending somewhere to be arrived at again
And again; the transcending leap of faith
Of a deer crossing the clearing and into my life.

Your experiences become gifts you give to the reader with those words.
2015-09-09



Perhaps are right but i never tiré of reding the way you put them together. It's a beautiful vocabulary.
2015-09-08



This is interesting, my friend, and very effective. I like the idea of forming a vocabulary over time, while being aware of how this is shaped by places and experiences. The last few lines are particularly delightful, transporting me and Ms Bird to one of your beautiful locations. We enjoy following the hoof prints ourselves and wondering where they might lead us.
Applause!
2015-09-07



In a sense, I think all of us carry around a customized dictionary in our minds. A vocabulary or glossary of the words that specifically define our own unique experience of life and living. Sometimes those words are shared--words like pines, geese, stream, etc., also appear in my lexicon of experience.

The tally of words expands as we grow old and finally we can put the words in order and and what's left is the story of our lives. And what a story it is.
2015-09-07