Twenty-One Years

Came with wind and warning this morning
the first birds. Came sun polishing
the crucifix-insect where he paused
dew-instant. I beheld here and there
spiders going in grass to a thread cathedral,
and a round serpent holding both our breaths;
saw, on the twigs, the calligraphy of snails,
and ants marching on the flower-wheels.
Chariots carried all of the living down today.

Who will know that the light was particular,
betraying by one or many signs a place,
a time arrived at in dandelion summer
that I might stop to look at the under-side
of my memories, and slip from each hand
the stitched veil of a year?

Failure follows a ship on a voyage of Sundays,
but leaving a sea-greened cross to catch or drift to.
(Shirts make flags; visitors pass and will rescue.)
Listed in the boat, we turn toward lost, resighted
and prodigal island, mirage of our miracles.
But today will whirl especial in the water, will push
to a pilgrimage. The sight of a continent breaking
over the boat fountains me forward from purgatory.
On the channel the sea returns the faces
of friends in a grey mirror, their names
in the leaves of a book, washed beneath me
on the whitening wave, their flesh flashed
through this wilderness to make my cargo.

Today, the middle of a morning, I run after
any sight or sorrow, loud to discover sun
in the weather of shadow. Narrower now
by a year, called farther away and fixed faster
to a sail, leaving father and a last look
toward the back-swelling children’s horizon.
But dearer than these, I go in a bird’s direction
to a holiday country, priest of a water and a world.
Over the blue edge of the map with the flying fish,
that last year may not find my future face,
my hunting or haunted image frozen toward west.