Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ADOLESCENCE, by LEROY OLIVER MCLEOD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ADOLESCENCE, by                    
First Line: White morning, like a frosted window-pane
Last Line: Was dark with secrets as the depths below.
Subject(s): Adolescence; Growth; Maturity; Time; Youth; Teen Agers


I

White morning, like a frosted window-pane,
Pressed numb the rosy rondure of your face.
A diamond dazzle pricked into your brain
Through eyes like frozen crystals . . . Still your pace,
Undaunted, scissored through the brittle cold
to reach the lone-trod footprints of a man.
Over the silvered snow -- though spent and old --
Their haste became a lead-rope as you ran.
Iced as the ragweeds now, you stand aside,
And look where, hushed in feathered fall, were pressed
The accents of that unreturning stride . . .
Shivering, you peer behind -- as if you guessed
What it might be that lures man's onward track
So urgently beyond its coming back.

II

Like iridescence blown, now here, now there,
Were your perceptions; and they veered and flew
Unmindful of the body borne on air
Till this cold wind of change bedraggled you.
Then strangely troubled at the larger weight,
In Time's bleared April pool you peered, and found
How rude flesh held you, and fled desperate,
Shamed by a wall of mirrors round and round.
Still must you seek to flee this nakedness --
As a caught wildling covers trap and chain;
That strides out boldly, and in sharp distress
Is jerked and thrown, and frantic tries in vain
Yet more . . . and cowers at last to wait in dread,
Mocked by the jays in old boughs overhead.

III

Not like the rounding wave a stone has made,
Rousing from hidden deeps a hoarsened sound;
Nor like the faint stir when a leaf, all browned,
Is by a breeze on cool smooth water laid;
Nor like pool dimples when it rains at last;
Nor like the little wake so quick to follow
The swift kiss of a mirrored evening swallow, --
Was the strange smile that moved your face . . . and passed.
Mirthless it was, in one stark moment seen;
More like an upsurge on a somber pond
When, down beneath, a shape we never know,
Flounders and dives in haste to denser green.
And all the while your unlit gaze beyond
Was dark with secrets as the depths below.





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