Where can I go when the constraints,
When there are constraints
But no space for constraints,
Make me want to
Run away
To anything
Anyone, any
Possibility
Of braving
The scariest leap I feel upon me
To take into
A universe not understood?
Does it matter that I am old, a
Pilgrim cleaving to
Ancient messages from
Rivers and plains
Where understandings
Grew and bloomed
Before age helped me
In my stubborn recalcitrance
Find my way
Into mystery
Now become comfort
In the maelstrom?
I can’t go anywhere for a day,
Day or two
Unclear,
The whims of February
But in this momentary stasis
I am flying on an aeroplane
With that strange relief of perspective
Knowing that all is out of my control
I begin my telling because this is a
Terrifying beautiful beauty here,
Everywhere
In ice, these days of grey then
Flour-sifting snow, then rain,
Graupel,
Sleet and
Patterning ice
Mind you when I tell you this is new
The plains woman’s wiring, mine, telling
This is weather that is new.
And we are deep in ice, then snow
To ice that melts a bit, freezes, and then snow,
And on.
Denny came down to drag Peter’s truck
Spun out on ice
Taking hay to the goat barn
Back to a spot unblocking the long drive
Toward the other barns and
All feels settled for the moment.
Everywhere there is nothing
But rolling sheen, bluing into dark,
Our land of ice pure and pristine right now
In the deep out there
My head beginning to clear
In the heart
Though I’ve no idea
What lies on the horizon.
Responsorial
Listen to yourself, dear,
She’d say,
Holding my hand,
Winds whipping whisps about
In our hair
As I was leaving,
Always leaving in the heat blowing
The dry sultries that settled like
Barely breathing mantles we shouldered in
Those Great Plains summers
She always said that to me.
I want what I want.
Look at yourself, I say to him, recalling
Timeless words, wisdoms shared,
Becoming braver in the recall, and saying
What I want with you
More stability
More understanding
More space
I want all that
And I want to love you in
The ways of love.
And also
But also,
And I also
Want all that
That I have and will never
Not want anymore,
And flying above and under the
Beyond, the past and future,
I say to him, I will never crave more of
The precious than what we have.
Coda
There were years before she saw
That river again
Though she crossed too many to
Remember
Save
The Little Huerfano, an
Unchained melody
So an old friend
Arrives
Neither of us suspecting that arrival
And it doesn’t matter,
Except in the days of my life,
To be remembered as
Beautiful friend
From
Miles ago
Renewed in fast moments
In my
Recent
As I struggle for
Understanding
Bereft
Or as always,
Maybe not, at least not yet,
Bereft
And knowing he couldn’t be the
Agent of that, tho
I say,
Oh Lord, very
Fine he is.
Last night,
Making my way down some straight precipices,
In my dream of course,
And perhaps on a mountainous landscape
Among energies undaunted
By a climb,
Or a fall
I remember walking on in
Trepidation
Wondering if in fact I could
Claw my way straight back up
Those channeled precipices
And then
I figured,
I could not, and then
Wanting to be small and lithe, or
Wanting to be
At least an old woman
Worth speaking with—
You know how,
When someone sets aside
Papers, view
Anything
Shifts away toward and
From window, table
Chair
Eye cocks and
Softens
An extra beat in time saying
Perhaps,
An unexpected gesture…
Her unexpected gesture…
I return from a reverie
To a reverie, musing
What, then—
From the corner of my eye,
The dreaming eye,
I see the stairs.
They are the color of
Those steep precipices of clay,
And walking towards them
Miasma, past as always,
I pick up my shoulders
Not so little my time
Different than so little time
In a recognition
I see that, but had I not,
I would not now see
The vast of it
I’ve always seen horizon, and
Just now my inner landscape’s
Verticality.
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
William Butler Yeats
