For a Poet of Nature

Eleanor Wilner

Opinions, we only seemed to hold, to hoe
the ordinary fields-in fact, we were, like him
cunning by nature, natural only
by adoption; finding, in the vast irrelevance
of green, a hiding place with a good name.
We, who couldn't really plow a field, or
bring the rich mud tumble of the earth
to bear, took refuge in the dappled light,
in mist, in trellises
where the tendrils of the vine
tangled the light as it broke
through reluctance into shade. Let us admit
this green was a filter and a frame,
and not the living shelter that it seemed.
Through it, we held the light at bay,
though it spotted our skin until we were afraid
of the camouflage we had become.
Like children seeking power over loss, we had
begun a game of hide and seek, and
by the odd coincidence of need
or scarcity of places left
to hide, had stumbled into the same arbor.

If we could have said, then, why we had come
and having touched, dispelled the play
of light that made our skin seem lace
instead of flesh, perhaps-
but we did not. By then, we had become
the figures in a shadow play, and were so wholly
other to ourselves, that nothing much was said.
The sun caught the trellis ladder in the light,
showing where the paint was flaking off the wood,
how many of the vines were dead,
how intricate the weaving was, how admirable
the whole design.