Daylong in the waist-high weeds and ivies I ate the wonderfully buttery summer’s bread, And bright as tears on sleeves I played and frisked And forgot the wolf in the clock. 5 And windy summer ran out of the morning And the stag-breasted dew each dawned day Rode running and riotous from the cool of the moon Unwound from the darks of mouse and fox. Then the others, the pummellers 10 Came unashamed with their wronging love, Sham-battering hands and scolding mouths And gave away anger for their deepest, hurt truth; With red apple hands, with bones twice broken, They strode hero-headed over the blown-down time 15 Over the greeny edge of the faraway weather, Topping sun and cloud of the tumbledown town. Deep in the heartwood home, and hunched and knotted, As full of fears as a tit-mouse’s shivers I kept the woods home that kept me hid 20 In the bone-lonely branches of my bloodred ribs. And dawn in its trial of summer survival Turned red in the remembered air, And summer sun crept crabwise until it was moon, And I heard the sun’s hours ride down to their doom. 25 But oh the woods were golden in their burning Beyond the dog-drowning stones that cried aloud In the midnight riverbed’s spattering blacks; In my wood-held home and hallowed owlly hollows With my pockets full of leaves and string and talisman rocks, 30 Vowelling dogs howled to adder and frog, While all about the sold home and understood wood House and wood flamed trumped in woe everlasting.
From the collection "Nobody Poems"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.