Corydon & Alexis

shepherdboy? not the most salient image for contemporary readers

nor most available. unless you’re thinking brokeback mountain:

a reference already escaping. I did love a montana man, though no

good shepherd

rather: a caveman, came spelunking into that grotto I’d retreated to

what light he bore illumined such small space—physically, temporally

and did he have a grove of beech trees? no, no grove

but together we found an old-growth stand of redwood

we gouged each other’s chests instead of wood: pledges that faded

he was not cruel nor I unwitting. but what endures beyond any

thicket?

example: he took me to the ocean to say farewell. I mean me: farewell

to ocean

the ocean, for that matter, to me. us both fatigued, showing signs

of wreckage

and that man I had loved stood back from the edge of things

he did not hold me

I expected not to be held

we all understood one another: shepherd understudy, ocean, me

and did he go back to his fields and caves? yes, but they were gone

strip-mining, lumber, defoliant, sterile streams: you knew that was

coming

weren’t we taught some starched sermon: the pasture awaits us

elsewhere

back up a moment: the forest you mentioned—remember, instead of a grove?

untouched for the most part. some human damage, but not ours

we left no mark, not there in the midst of those great trees:

not in the concentric rings that might have held us far past living

instead, I put that man, like so many others, on paper—

a tree already gone from sight where once it had drawn the eyes

upward: the crest of a mountain. crumpled thoughts, crumpled love

shepherdboy, do you see the wild fennel bulbs I gathered for you

olallieberries, new-mown grass, the tender fruits of the coastal fig?

I put them on paper, too, so fragile. for nothing is ever going to last

For Haines Eason

Source: Poetry (September 2006)