In Confidence

It's that time again. Summer is closing off and all my favorite things are up around the bend. Like rain and days under the white veils of clouds. Like early sunsets and the ground damp and sloshy and smoke on the frosty air and little blinking lights and choral music.

"There is one thing that gives radiance to everything," wrote Chesterton. "It is the idea of something around the corner." Well, I have been thinking: we who are coming home to the home we have never been to before, what a lot we have got ahead of us to be happy about.

Come away, come away. We're going up around the bend.

Yesterday I had three poems published in the Fall 2013 Issue of Grey Sparrow Journal. One of them is about waiting, and the manner of our waiting. I thought I'd share it here with all of you. 

IN CONFIDENCE

“What is real about us all is that each of us is waiting.”
(–W.H. Auden, A Christmas Oratorio)

for the clean sun the clean rain
the big wave and the grey-eyed hurricane
for the children to come home
we have put supper on
it will not be long now

for red over the great hills
the big fish with the gold scales and thirsty gills
for the blue river to arrive
out of the high mountains
it will not be long

for the white star, the white horse
and whatever is at the end of course
for the little lacy flowers to open
for the wet butterfly-tongues
not long now

for the trumpets of the trains
the big sky smoky-white with aeroplanes
we will jump high laughing
waving our small hands so fast
not long

for whatever is coming
with big slow footsteps and soft humming
to get here wearing just
whatever it has on hand
will be perfect

we who have been hanging, hanging
on the noises in the darkness
will not hang back we will
run forward with our arms wide
calling welcome welcome