Men are trees
long rotting the ground around them
raining fruit,
but truly lurk in ambush
for the day they will give at once
their whole self.
Nestled over a bed of coals,
we are no better than vegetables and suet
plunging into the rolling kettle,
melting into strings.
My flight wriggles safely through arrows
to land on these precious carpets
slung outdoors,
and there to ripen like day on the simultaneous
feasts of belly and heart.
I swim without predators
in a cistern swollen to a pond to a sea
by the loving trips of a well bucket.
Stones roll away
and our ancestors are naked.
Have they not bred their imagination
into sphinxes and gryphons
of loathing and affection?
Over-rich and over-dunged affection!
It glows over the night’s land
out of a century of patient composting
not soon burnt out,
a panoramic Arctic twilight
that makes the schools froth the surface
and leap into the maw.
Are you ashamed, embarrassed, outraged,
humiliated, terrified, crushed?
Then you have learned to love.
Give the whole self at once to this forest.
Edward Wright Haile
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/family-reunion-6/
