• POETRY •

Portage Farm Poems

“…a sleep behind them as they lay becalmed

on the reflection of their Half Moon

while the sky blazed and then the time lifted them

up the dark passage they had no name for.”  – Merwin, from “Another River”

 

down past the cornfield

where the spasms of ducks

across the cool face of water

splashed to define the pond

 

before it froze over for the season

and the geese we are told

could not keep their v-lines

in check as they passed

 

here also a hundred years ago

and had to land as they called

out by precisely the same

voice that emerged over all eons

 

over clouds of distant time

when man still wandered

the continent trying to find water

a rockless plot of land

 

that might grow with sunshine

like this one you just passed

and could feel it pulsed as your story

that had never been told