Time away from something lets us see it anew. That's the way it is with me and things I've written and stuck in a drawer or left in an old computer file.
I looked at this poem last week and have worked on it today. Actually, all I did was remove four words, change the line breaks and the look of the stanzas, and add the word "then." We'll see. It's one I began years ago, in the 1990s, when my life included a living husband and children at home. How different everything was then.
As to the poem, I could not be satisfied with it then. I wonder if I'll ever be satisfied. Certainly it's nothing world-shaking, just one of those experiences a person wants to remember and to share, to give others the view of what she saw and felt on that morning walk. I'll likely just leave it at that.
A Morning Encounter
Carol Schiess
Wind whips down
the gullies of this mountain.
Broad, red-brown roads
wrap around it like a scarf
then narrow into rutted paths.
daisies and lupine jostle with the wind,
a slender stream carries on
polite conversation with rocks
and road as I pass.
This morning bushes move,
then snap with the pull and bite
of a porcupine taking an early breakfast.
Long I watch, wondering if he has not
caught my scent on the wind.
I want us to be alike, the porcupine
and I, some understanding
to pass between us, that today--
and all days--I am kin to the wild.
I move close, as if to touch him.
He sees me, turns away,
waddles up the side of the mountain,
chewing as he goes.
Porcupine, I call. Stay.
He sets his eyes on me
long enough to see what we share
and what we do not.
I hear him break through
bushes and wildflowers
long after we have parted.
2 comments:
I feel as if I were there - sharing the walk with you. Perfect.
Yeah. I still like it. But I like The River best of all.
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