One With The Sun
One With The Sun
Original Text
Mahoning (London, ON: Brick Books, 1994): 58-59.
1Child
2one with the sun
3in trackless fields
4of yellow grass and thistle, scent
5of humid heavy air and the wing music
6of bees and flies.
7Child, slender
8nakedness to itself unknown,
9true colour of the light
10dispersed invisibly
11or glowing around the black hulls
12of distant thunderheads, around
13the grasshopper's countenance,
14solemn, vigilant and wise.
15Green apples, poured full
16of density, of crispness, float unmoved
17under leaves on the slope. Brown
18fallen apples nest
19in secret whorls of grass. The apple tree:
20alone in so much space. And below
21in the woods by the water
22a sweet dead branch
23cracks lightly
24in the shadow in the wind.
25But here is an old track
26through the grass head-high
27to a child: who
28made it? They must have
29passed and passed by this one tree,
30by the abandoned, tireless car
31where rabbits peer out, and the circle
32of black embers,
33cans, springs, skeletons
34of furniture. They too
35passed here many times
36on their way from the street's end
37to the oaks that screen
38the river. There
39the sun is nesting now, night
40rises with pale flutterings
41of white wings from roots
42of plants and the black water.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2004
Special Copyright
<b>This poem cannot be published anywhere without the written consent of Albert Frank Moritz or the Brick Books permissions department.</b>