Bright Shadow
for Peter Davison
Wherever they come from whether the all-
but impenetrable bracken
on the nearer
side of Maple Road (so closely does she bed
them down) or deeper in the wetland (each
new season surrendering further to
the strangle
of purple loosestrife) they
have made for weeks a daybed of
the longer
grass beneath the net
that sometimes of an evening marks
the compass of our shuttlecock
so Steven
when at last he finds
an afternoon for mowing must purposely
chase them into the woods where she
so watchful
in the normal course of foraging but
lulled or made a stranger to her own
first-order instinct for dis-
quietude (so firmly
have the scents and apparitions of
this people-riddled bit of earth impressed
themselves upon the wax that stands for world-
as usual) (a scant
twelve months ago she was
herself the sucking diligence that made
the mother stagger on the dew-drenched
lawn) will find them near the salt lick and
as by a subtle field-of-
force will reel them back to
stations-of-the-daily-path that portion out
their wakefulness
(the ravaged
rhododendrons bearing witness) forever en-
grafting the strictures of hunger (bright shoots)
to the strictures (bright
shadow) of praise.
Magnetic North
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