Steeplebush

In the month of steeplebush

a few years after Frost’s death

I’m browsing his Ripton cabin.

A sibilance flows through it,

rustling the yellowed pages

of Modern Library books

arranged like country gravestones.

When I lie on his musty daybed

with its blue cotton coverlet

I see myself white and wrinkled

in landscapes smutty with flowers.

Steeplebush flaunts among them,

along with Joe-Pye weed, tansy,

yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace. At the foot

of Temple Mountain, fifty years

after my one trip to Ripton,

I slog along in my aches and pains,

still determined to hike myself

into a glory of fitness

unattainable in my eighth

decade. The fresh August sun

hones shadows as brisk as blades.

I still remember the feel

of Frost’s mournful possessions—

sharpened pencils left on the desk,

an armchair sagging from use,

a shabby green sweater on a hook.

No one will bother preserving

the hole I leave in the atmosphere.

But maybe on this modest slope

my presence might invoke the pink

of steeplebush, as if the light

were giving birth to itself.

(first appeared in I-70 Review)