Shade Building on Shade Completed

On our 5th Anniversary

Only a lover, like a wood,
Lightened in the hair by sun
Alone, lush wind that lifts
And rearranges buds to brighter
Space, blossoms darkly in the shade,
No prey to lichen bored on trunk
And root alike that hide her from
The touch of simple rays
That redistribute night and day
To other forms of sunken
Understory in the glade,
Bare wooden rings of growth
And undergrowth long since made
By galleries of fungal hosts
As close as Chinese puzzle dolls,
Bowling pins that level life and limb
On their new, unaltered skin,
Lacquered clones of pine and sky,
Onions natural and familial
As baby’s lesson of the cell,
From which spring organic lights
That only shadows know for sure,
Building forests out of toys,
Not so weathered as mature.

June 21st, 1985
Bedford