DiaBLOGue

HARK, hearer, hear what I do; lend a thought now, make believe
We are leafwhelmed somewhere with the hood 
Of some branchy bunchy bushybowered wood, 
Southern dene or Lancashire clough or Devon cleave,
That leans along the loins of hills, where a candycoloured

Time held me green and dying, though I sang, 
And spun me off the whinnied fields and out of praise
In his big harvest hands ’til horse and hen and place
Were only memory, then myth, then vacant space

Jim asked me, encouraged me, even begged me 
not to do it. You’re surrounded by seedy lies, 
he said, don’t sew them into your breasts. Did he worry
it would reflect badly on him? I don’t know, 

Reb Tevye is in the shower singing 
“If I Were a Rich Man.” He’s eleven, 
my son, and suddenly in love 
with Broadway music because Mrs. Hale, 
whom he affectionately calls 
The Bomb, has inspired him. This little football player 

Though I know it to be impossible 
I always remember winter having 

Growing up every child learned the story, how horses
stole themselves away like thieves in the night 
down to the cool waters to drink, shrug off 
the day’s work, which had gathered, swollen