This is what I'd tell you if you were here:
I'd tell you that the hills
are that complicated color,
the green that has no name
when the long grass is still new and
holds purple shadows at the root
And its tasseled ends are flagged with silver.
I'd tell you how the hills loll
and bask in the clean sun.
How their flanks are bruised with lupine and clover
and splashed with wild buttercup.
How they giggle with poppies.
And how the clouds above them
trail from a watercolor brush
and bleed their peach and yellow and violet
into the frail and kindly blue.
I would press you, in a whisper
my face bent near your ear,
to see the fledgling finches, not quite brave
and teetering wild hearted at their brink of sky.
I would give you bread and jam to taste
if you were here.
But you are gone too far to care
about hills and finches and even jam.
And without you all the world grows tight and small
around it's myriad imploding wonders.
I absolutely love this poem up until the last stanza, where I become a little hurt that you think that the hills don't mean anything to me. You know very well that I dream of home even when I am in the most remote parts of the world, and that there is absolutely nowhere in the world that I would rather be than gazing at the hills from our front porch. (I'm also a little hurt that you chose to include the photo of me right after I let Katie George cut my hair!)
ReplyDeleteThis breaks my heart in a very poignant, sweet way. Such gorgeous descriptions of nature going on without the loved one, such longing... This is another one I'll have to print out to savor. When I grow up, I want to be able to write poetry like you do, Jana! :)
ReplyDeleteErin, I am just a bystander but this is a poem and it isn't just about you. It about me someone the poet has never met yet knows.
ReplyDelete