Come Soon

DOROTHY EMERSON

COME SOON

I fear you will never see

your grandfather again. We

have had a long winter, many

deaths.

(LEITER)

The ocean's liquid acres move.

Its greenest fields collapse in snow.

And my omniscient eye discerns

Aeons of winters rushing on.

A letter from inland spreads its wings

And rests, its message in my hands.

"Come soon," I read, and "Never again."

Then memory and metaphor confuse

The Blue Ridge Mountain years with waves,

And mountains with beaches. He'll come to earth

As drowned men trying no more reach shore

At last. I say, "Tl go." I hear

How everywhere the bell buoys beat,

Wave-wrung, tide-tugged, the bell buoys beat

A heart-like theme of pulse and lapse

Where mortal fluids circulate.

"Oh, swimmer, swimmer, far at sea,

The saved man's lost at last," I say,

"The rushed green closes over again,

Over the cold of separate deaths."