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.