My father and I go for a walk on the old derelict road that dead-ends in the swamp running from nowhere to nowhere - two ruts almost erased by scrub, bramble, and gutted cars. He pushes aside the scrub trees with his cane. I part the brambles following him. We both look into the derelict cars, the safety glass shattered into spiderwebs, into crystal cataracts - the cars lie blind in the green forest. We talk, as old friends will do, feeling themselves parting. A rivulet crosses the road spills into a hubcap and out again onto the earth. We sit on a wall beside the brook where frogs' eggs shimmer in quiet eddies. To each jelly bead a pinhead of life, and in each pellucid, tapioca bud life circles looking for a way out. He says how much the road has changed. The great elms are gone, rotted or broken by storm. He points out the stumps with the ferrule of his cane, points out the long bodies rotting in the clean green, angry at the new scrub shooting up where the shadows are gone. We walk back silent in birdsong. I part the scrub for his cane lend a hand over the long bodies rotting in the green spring sun. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BRIDGE: PROEM. TO BROOKLYN BRIDGE by HAROLD HART CRANE LETTY'S GLOBE by CHARLES TENNYSON TURNER THE MORAL FABLES: THE LION AND THE MOUSE by AESOP THE SUNKEN LANE by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN THE ARTIST TO HIS WIFE by STANLEY KILNER BOOTH |