Turning Leaves

Turning the leaves of slow summer days,

pages that always repeat by extremes of season,

I still hear echo untamable chthonian voices.

Though the benevolent sun pipe birds across staves of blue sky,

come winter the old shattering laughter will rock

my deep cellars of mind, mocking remembered light.

Thus the years bring balance, let time speed the slow wheel

and turn differently than for one-seasoned snow

or for one Easter’s motionless palmful of sun

before a field of unplucked lilies.

And we come to accept our double vision.

Then bid it welcome:

explode each partial credo;

hold faith only in register.

Celebrant, not of season, but of seasons,

let blown spume crystal the untroubled pines of mountains,

testing the shallow root, the brittle bough;

let the green sun down to illumine the deep-sea floor;

let the heaven-tongued lark, after hurricane, find him unhomed

and then sing, if he can, an unimpeachable flute,

and the rough-throated gull, the starvling,

shout name to his hunger.