100
by
Jay Rosen
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Trionesta
“I was the world in which I walked”
--Wallace Stevens
Water froze in the walled cistern,
fir boughs leaned on drums of rye,
fir tops spiking the air.
Even fences seemed to murmur.
Fire burned, embers
stirred in the crumbling chimney.
You slept on, as did the daubers,
child prone on your knee.
You dreamt of far-off places.
Wind whistled in the pear trees
rattling the pantries.
Foxes tripped your snares.
You flew down the lanes,
sulfurous, scabby towns,
memory terrain,
the world your wedding gown.
Your child, my mother, pillowed
with insects hatching in the staves
whenever the heat waves
swelled up and down the corn rows.
Fearless of marsh hawks,
beetles, rattlers, and bees, she napped
among cattle and cornstalks,
till the drowsy sun slept.
I’ve never been to Branscombe,
or slept in fir boughs by a lane.
So little changed!
Everywhere you looked was home.
Yet I know, as my mother
knew, those lanes stifling as corn rows,
you at the core in all weather,
no matter the times or the boroughs.
|
Magnolia