The shadows sharpen
     As a single scuttling cloud
Abandons
     Its stance between the human eye
     And that thin crescent of a pre-quarter moon
And wanders off to hide some stars.
The willow stands
     In the marshy ground
     Whose deep humus marks
     A spring that just failed to surface,
A subterranean food source,
     Bearing simple liquid nourishment
     To the sun-fed, photosynthesizing grass.
The crescent moon lingers
     Just above the highest
     Of the thin, tiny leaves
     Of the wetland tree.
Memories dance,
     Wearing the fogy garb of ghosts,
     Whispering of past understandings,
     Future knowledge:
Creating a new mythic "Fall"
As the conquering barbarians of Rome
     Spread the religion of power
     Across the soil of several continents,
Barely pausing in their ride of pillage
     For their self-destructive wars
Until even the western continent had fallen,
     The last earth-worshipping child of life
     Confined on a barren patch of radio-active Arizona,
Which Caesar's child would now mine
     To scatter its poisons about the earth.
Another child of Caesar, calling himself old names,
     Witch, Magician, Dreamer,
Stares at the miracle of the sky,
     Dreams some earth-loving pre-Greek mother,
    And offers his love to a crescent of moon.
 

9/11/83

Index     Maturity