Parts of a Story

Or, it could go like this, since

you want to know names,

places, people, particulars:

it was the particular paradise

of ninety acres of orchard grass

and a few scattered woods;

barbed wire, Holsteins,

and the plush of spring

as you feel it, wet beneath you,

when you sit down in a field in May-

or in the pasture's folds where the creek ran:

there were ores of a gray clay

she could sit and mine all morning;

rotting trees, whose meat flaked off

like the flesh of fish;

or in the barn where the straw-dust

harried and swirled.

It was in an inheritance ,

since it was given as all earth is given,

as ready to receive the pledge

of a young girl as the cow-flops

and the dull thud of horses' hooves.

We may start here in this field,

with her kneeling, with the colors wet and black

suddenly pouring up-

but eventually we will have to confront the father,

then the ravishment by air,

then, still later-

the ravishment by imagination.