by Richard Reynolds
There are poppies amid growing grass
Along the roadside bank;
They hide the rock on which they grow.
That rock is solid, uneven, gray, old,
Crumbly here, crumbled there,
But still rock solid, covered some by damp soil
That once was rock itself.
The roots seek minerals, I think,
And the rock feeds them geology,
Turning to dirt in the effort.
Along the bike lane they grow and decay
Against traffic into town,
3,000 miles west of the Chambersburg Pike
And Taneytown Road; sure it's passed, but,
What would the Generals have done here?
Every Northern boy, too, Faulkner.
Every Northern boy knows it too.
They are back together again, she said.
I didn't know they were apart. And from what?
They weren't married. But the complexity of that "what"
Staggers the makeup of "marriage". Like the proud Bastard Edmund, right?
Not some dutiful semi-weekly: A love child,
No impediments allowed.
Past Dana Court, now. (To court, to woo)
Back into town, now, only one little round hill away.
They are old, now, too old for this
Staying or rejoining; do they even live together
These rocks and the grass and poppies?
Comments