I know, gone long and far,

and yet he is the same

for the dead are changeless.

They grow no older.

It is I who have changed,

grown strange to what I was.

Yet I, the changed one,

ask: ‘How you been?’

He grins and looks at me.

‘I been eating peaches

off some mighty fine trees.’

Another Descent

Through the weeks of deep snow

we walked above the ground

on fallen sky, as though we did

not come of root and leaf, as though

we had only air and weather

for our difficult home.

But now

as March warms, and the rivulets

run like birdsong on the slopes,

and the branches of light sing in the hills,

slowly we return to earth.

Below

Above trees and rooftops

is the range of symbols:

banner, cross, and star;

air war, the mode of those

who live by symbols; the pure

abstraction of travel by air.

Here a spire holds up

an angel with trump and wings;

he’s in his element.

Another lifts a hand

with forefinger pointing up

to admonish that all’s not here.

All’s not. But I aspire

downward. Flyers embrace

the air, and I’m a man

who needs something to hug.

All my dawns cross the horizon

and rise, from underfoot.

What I stand for

is what I stand on.

Ripening

The longer we are together

the larger death grows around us.

How many we know by now

who are dead! We, who were young,

now count the cost of having been.

And yet as we know the dead

we grow familiar with the world.

We, who were young and loved each other

ignorantly, now come to know

each other in love, married

by what we have done, as much

as by what we intend. Our hair

turns white with our ripening

as though to fly away in some

coming wind, bearing the seed

of what we know. It was bitter to learn

that we come to death as we come

to love, bitter to face

the just and solving welcome

that death prepares. But that is bitter

only to the ignorant, who pray

it will not happen. Having come

the bitter way to better prayer, we have

the sweetness of ripening. How sweet

to know you by the signs of this world!

Fall

for Wallace Fowlie

The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,

Paradisal fruits that taste of no man’s sweat.

Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;

When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.

Throwing Away the Mail

Nothing is simple,

not even simplification.

Thus, throwing away

the mail, I exchange

the complexity of duty

for the simplicity of guilt.

For the Future

Planting trees early in spring,

we make a place for birds to sing

in time to come. How do we know?

They are singing here now.

There is no other guarantee

that singing will ever be.

Traveling at Home