I thought the first one was a leaf falling faster
Than any leaf could fall--no coasting the updrafts,
None of those sinuous floating undulations
That body forth the longing of anything falling
To return to the branch--and then it dipped and stalled
And touched its featherweight of gold to the fencepost,
And there we were, risen at dawn to breathe while we could
The vanishing cool of early late summer morning
And see the goldfinches should they chance to return--
And they came, but on a wind that never blew before:
I saw as in a rain-pool slicking the roadway
Or a shard of mirror lodged in a Romany's tree
The poor marvelous daft poet limping his way
Along the watery English lanes and by-lanes,
Humming the air of Highland Mary, dreaming his aim
Was taking him close and closer to remembered beauty--
Daisy, goldfinch, grass that smells of the baker's oven--
Who might have wrapped around him her arms long and small
Had she managed to breathe the air of his belief
And not die blameless and alone, sister to nothing Or the bride of darkness, for all the difference it makes.
By Gibbons Ruark