For a Poet of Nature

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.