In an afternoon bright with September, or in an old dissension bright with fear, I went wandering where there was purity in white lady's tresses, hiddenness in peeping bluebottle gentians, and where many species of goldenrod and asters made funeral for the lost summer world, and ferns, taken by frost, made russet the fields and turned the waysides yellow and brown. It struck me that I had wandered all my years like this, half a century, searching for the touch that heals, but there is no touch; searching everywhere for the look that says @3I know@1, but there is no look. This is Vermont, the land hidden from violent times, far from the center of life, they say. I walk by the gray brook, around the knoll, through the pines. Winter is coming. Searching, searching with my hand, I feel September's little knives, and with my eyes I see bright spattered leaves in the matted grass. I hear this song, if it be a song: these insistent little bright fearful hesitant murmurs from high in the old pine trees. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFTER THE RAIN by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH SONNET: 13. OUT OF CATALLUS by GAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS FULLNESS OF THE BIBLE by H. J. BETTS PARADOX by MAGDELEN EDEN BOYLE VIVAMUS by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES SPRING'S WOOING by NELLIE BRISTOW SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE: 44 by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING |