Boundary Waters--Limerence Collage
-1-
Lying in bed Saturday morning
trying to weigh objectively
the pros and cons of your various
e-mail options,
another thought keeps
leaping into my lap
like an irrepressible puppy:
I hope you don't cut your beard
before I have the chance
to get to know you
well enough
to work up the courage
to give you this poem,
inquiring, just theoretically,
of course,
whether you would deem it
"unwanted personal attention"
and "sexual harassment"
were one to request
permission
to run her fingers
through its
softsilver
silkscratchy
terrain.
-2-
Meeting and Passing
--By Robert Frost
As I went down the hill along the wall
There was a gate I had leaned at for the view
And had just turned from when I first saw you
As you came up the hill. We met. But all
We did that day was mingle great and small
Footprints in summer dust as if we drew
The figure of our being less than two
But more than one as yet. Your parasol
Pointed the decimal off with one deep thrust.
And all the time we talked you seemed to see
Something down there to smile at in the dust.
(Oh, it was without prejudice to me!)
Afterward I went past what you had passed
Before we met, and you what I had passed.
-3-
How many times have I walked blind this way,
navigating maps of dearest dreams and memories,
but lost to the real landscape of a face before me!
You casually mention
you grew that beard
in the Boundary Waters.
I instantly soar off--
to Sylvania;
to my childhood running Pigeon River wild
amidst bracken fern umbrellas
white pine forts
silver green lichens
and the tiniest
strawberriest fruits
behind the Forest Service barn;
to my dad's ecology tales
of the Minnesota Boundary Waters--
surely pure, cold,
and softsweetly delicious
as the U.P. lakes
I float in
on holiday and now,
dreaming, longing,
the water drenching my thirsty skin
and seeping down to the deepest places;
to my memories
of my ex,
who honeymooned me into
the wilderness
and back-
packed with me up mountains
kneeling before yet
higher mountains;
naively seeking a climax,
an ultimate view
of the world,
and highest exhilaration:
"Now
we've really Made It."
-4-
I didn't realize then
that we had really made it,
as high as we
ever would be
together.
If only one could just
stand and see
the journey's moments,
each rivulet's watershed...
these local
maxima and minima
are It,
as far as the soul can see.
Our marriage went
downhill from there,
amidst noisy careers
and the vast distances
possible only
in closest proximity.
Surely the
idyllic memories
feed my present reverie,
in which you seem
so familiar, so cozy.
This dream
quickly finds confluence
with desire:
My left arm still recalls precisely
the softfurry feel
of your right forearm Friday
as you caught me on the street
for the briefest instant:
every neuron, pore,
and receptor in my body
primed for your signals,
ready to feed
the flowing fantasy.
I dream of waking up at 65,
still smiling and fond
of you,
beside me in our tent;
wondering what adventures
the dear day will bring,
thanking my stars
I have a friend
to traverse with me
the Boundary Waters
within and without.
-5-
A Line-Storm Song
--by Robert Frost
The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz-stones lift,
And the hoofprints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
The birds have less to say for themselves
In the wood-world's torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves,
Although they are no less there:
All song of the woods is crushed like some
wild, easily shattered rose.
Come be my love in the wet woods, come
Where the boughs rain when it blows.
There is the gale to urge behind
And bruit our singing down,
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind
From which to gather your gown.
What matter if we go clear to the west,
And come not through dry-shod?
For wilding brooch, shall wet your breast
The rain-fresh goldenrod.
Oh, never this whelming eastwind swells
But it seems like the sea's return
To the ancient lands where it left the shells
Before the age of the fern;
And it seems like the time when, after doubt,
Our love came back amain
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
-6-
On Monday night my child
wakes in a fever, dreaming of rain.
I take him to the bathroom,
give him hugs and drugs.
By morning he's fine.
His delusions and mine
rise up like summer storms
out of nothing more
than atmosphere.
With luck,
they disappear,
harmlessly into air
and unread poems.