Monday, September 7, 2015

Believe and Believe





Harrisville’s square brick houses
sun themselves like Renoir nudes.
Summer’s fading. Cricket re-tune

in the graveyard beside the pond.
A pair of white-haired women
canoe-race each other,

paddling so hard the water hurts.
I lie in the grass, risking ticks,
and watch the sky do nothing

but indulge its favorite blue.
You with your pearly religion
would mentally pioneer that space

with balloon-shaped benevolence
sure to offend normal Christians.
You’d postulate nuclear spirit

ripened over the years to a fine
hard gloss. Back on my feet
before I sink into the lichen

I wander back to browse among
the mill buildings braced on slopes
rolling toward Monadnock. A brook

tumbles one step at a time
toward a lake where growling boats
drag skiers to their doom. You’d laugh

as they tumble in prismatic spray,
dunking in bottom-feeder depth.
Whatever I say in defense of space

eroded by ancestral glaciers
applies to your right to believe
and believe. The hard brick houses

track the light like sundials. We’d live
a little unhappily here,
the winters shaped like bell jars;          

but when loons set the pond ringing
your imaginary benevolence
would apply, and the warmth

of sun on brick would penetrate
with a gold opulence you’d lather
all over yourself till you shine.


No comments: