Saturday, June 16, 2007
Legends
The water below, like rock,
moves slowly through centuries,
drawing time from a well
by mysterious drarf trees.
Sand swells where the end of an ice age
brought high water,
now a highway passes over,
a bump holding billions of lives,
not made to endure.
Salt grass collects into consciousness
above the tide line,
in tune with daily ocean bulges;
someday when the water freshens
the grass will disappear,
a changed earth raised with flowers.
(1980)
***
The first version of a poem I wrote twice, South Jersey at the edge of the Pine Barrens. A few years later, rather than revise it, I let the poem dictate itself again, & it came out very differently. Can't find the other poem, which I prefer, but I know it exists in one of my files & is titled "Pine Barrens."
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
moves slowly through centuries,
drawing time from a well
by mysterious drarf trees.
Sand swells where the end of an ice age
brought high water,
now a highway passes over,
a bump holding billions of lives,
not made to endure.
Salt grass collects into consciousness
above the tide line,
in tune with daily ocean bulges;
someday when the water freshens
the grass will disappear,
a changed earth raised with flowers.
(1980)
***
The first version of a poem I wrote twice, South Jersey at the edge of the Pine Barrens. A few years later, rather than revise it, I let the poem dictate itself again, & it came out very differently. Can't find the other poem, which I prefer, but I know it exists in one of my files & is titled "Pine Barrens."
