Driving to the Cold Hollow Mountains

for Geoff Hewitt

Strayed on the wide roads that drive north into Canada,
I've been drummed all day into the pitched colors
of the leaves dying. Times over, many times,
I found my hand a hard fist on the steering wheel
and my throat harsh with swallowing salt
in my laughter, love scraping the soaked air
for the trees
that declare their own bright translation
to the white houses and the weathered barns
they've lived next to all year.

For God's seal is on the trees:
They're going crazy in crowds by immovable boulders
and huge wet outcrops of granite.
They're going crazy with others in meadows stiff with gold weeds
or going crazy alone in certain patches of land
stretched fallow beside the black highways.
They go staggering, headlong exaltations of light,
as if God were asking in the red leaves
that shatter with visible rage the flared blue sky"
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?

I grant I was not here,
that I have no understanding of these changes.
Things happen.
I don't ask for answers any more,
but I have not learned how to suffer without noise
anything
even illuminations of dead leaves.

Nevertheless, if this is how things fall apart,
then let the Last Day come
beating on the ruddy hillsides,
bearing God's seal to hurt not the trees,
His last seal
which is silence.

　

BACK        NEXT