52

Musings on an Implacable Athena

On such a golden day I cannot regret

the brazen glance and grate between

a cool shifted sun

and the warm October-coated mountains

that so clash my senses.

It is not that your face, rising again from an autumn past,

cannot resurrect those words like grace

that eased a hard hour into bearableness,

but that they shone like a solitary flame

from such a dark clutch of heart;

older now, I dare notice

the giving you would not expend

lest words cost more than casual warmth:

gold flakes momentarily lighting

sunless patches of mulch when the small wind

ruffles the gloom of rhododendron

that seems so summer-natural

but will not deign to change its dress to participate

in the consummation of a year.

Now I can name it beauty—

the remembered in this shifted sun,

the eternal gesture bespeaking warmth as natural,

and this balance

tense between heart and eye.