4 a.m., May 3…….

Looking up from reading Wolf Willow
…the clock quietly ticking…
suddenly I’m not alone in the cool
lamplit room:

Stegner is sitting there in the squeaking rocker,
rocking slowly, by the cold wood stove.
He says nothing, just a wry smile,
a knowing look, deeper
than his starry Manitoba sky.

Facing each other in old worn chairs,
Beston and Borland muse about New England,
blue blizzards and lilacs, blowing
endless seasons across the ancient glacial hills;
how gold sunlight shimmers the steep sand,
the white sea birds, cold blue waters
sparkling, forever breaking, shaping
the outermost Cape.

At the black window, holding a red and silver
balalaika, Pasternak stands vigilant
in an embroidered peasant shirt, looking out
into tall bare birches, cold spring stars.
He turns to me with that perennial question
on his raw-boned Russian face, revealing
the deep pathos of shattered ideals,
of war, and loss.

Suddenly Akhmatova blows in from the night,
chilled, scented with passion and dried perfume,
broken loves like tender blossoms,
drops of blood on late spring snow ….

And over in the shadows sits
dark-eyed Jane Kenyon: her fingers resting
from gardening, from making luminescent words.
She puts down her half-empty glass of red wine
and crumbles old newspapers with split kindling.
Her voice is rich with flowers, and the sorrow
of killing frost, saying to the rest of us
“someone needs to build a fire”.

*

*

–Quilla

May 3, 2016 | Categories: Meditations, poetry, reflections | Tags: Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, ghosts, grief, Hal Borland, Henry Beston, Jane Kenyon, loss, love, passion, pathos, poetry, spring stars, Wallace Stegner, war | Leave a comment