I wander the snow gardens,
indices of yellow and red flowers
scattered like impulses pushing up
against the wispy covering-not lace,
but a translucent waving of sprinkled silk
all the way to the horizon.
The men who handle their ambiguous
shovels are growing into their work,
the snow a thin mist low on their shins.
I wave to their not looking
up. One of them raises
his head and stares along
the line his staring makes,
aimless; no one sees
the gang of short-waisted boys
who fell in behind me some time
ago, I can’t remember, taunting.
The stubble on the raw face
of their leader is the color of char;
none of them could be
over eight, but they are old,
old. I couldn’t escape
from their unbiased attention
even if I wanted to,
even if I were one of them,
if I gave myself up.
When I turn to them suddenly
they recede as one body,
staring their stone stare
as if that is what keeps them
on my trail, as if that is my trail.
They couldn’t be less interested
in the wide plain of snow they seem
hardly to touch, or the men whose work
they don’t see bearing on their future.
It may be decisive that the gardens
stretch so far, keep so many
intent on their indefinite labor,
yield such a gentle tendency
of color under the sifting snow,
its fine white tending.
It takes a life to realize
I want nothing but this
which I thought to pass by
without thinking, nothing
but these tenuous vistas,
the heft of the hoe’s shadow
in my hands, my body’s turnings
among snowfall and snowlift,
the whole stress of this farflung balancing
which grounds us, tempers us, gives.
Time
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