The One - Third Movement: Remembering - Song 17: Burning Ground — Segment II

 

THIRD MOVEMENT

REMEMBERING

 

SONG SEVENTEEN

BURNING GROUND

 

II

            As I walk old roads, sadness deepens, but I do not worry

            There is so little left of me to hurt

                        that pain skims by like the darkened trunks of leafless trees

                                    passing outside a lighted coach

 

            I choose this walk because I want to.

            This is the last time I will feel these things

                        in just this specific way

                                    for I am leaving on a short walk up a hill

                                    with the One who has been waiting

                        The One who always has been and always will

 

 

            I am tired like an old tree who has stood too long

                        and when the wind comes, I will be glad of falling

            no longer needing to reach higher, longer every day

                        but simply rest and rest and rest and slip away

            

 

            “Come closer.  You are needed.”

                        a whisper comes on a light cool wind

            I think I wake

            Snow has fallen while I slept and now the ground

            is brilliant white under a strong winter sun

            and I am robed in black with silver clasps.

            It is a tree who speaks and I will answer

            stepping through the whiteness to stand

            beneath black limbs arching over me

            as I drop the black robe off my shoulders

                        onto snow

 

 

            I am empty now, a hollow core

            I should be collapsing inward but I am not

            It is as if I am here but not at once

I am only here re-tracing steps

                        of older days and well-known times

                        that I now see and comprehend

            Returning cures the emptiness that rests within

            like an inner sheathe of new radiant skin

 

 

            Returning to the first point where I was very young

            I walk again the roads cloaked in ice

            I breathe in air so cold

                        it burns my nostrils and I think of days

                        when snowdrifts grew higher than imagination

            I will not go in now – just like then – 

            to supposed safety of fire and hearth

These places are still full of drunkenness and unwed dreams

They do not sing and cannot hear the wide-mouthed stars

 

 

I have been here many times before but never in this way

Familiar streets are older and aging faces try to hide

            where they have not been

There is no hiding what their eyes give away 

            as they peer at me as if I held some secret

 or as if I were a foreign creature from the sea

            In fact, I am

lately arrived out of the tempest

                        rolling in on the stormiest waves

            A sailor, lately ashore 

washed up from the waters’ ways

among them – a strange and native face

 

 

            I begin to see that time is relative motion

            and only when I move can time and effect be seen

For those who neither burn ground nor sail ocean

            I must appear as an ill-remembered dream

So clearly now I walk

            I no longer fear being swallowed whole

                        down the long dark throat of dim cold towns

For I have the mark – I bear the stain

of something their thin voices can never name

 

 

“Come nearer.”

            Again the whisper

“I am here,” I say

            A rattling sigh sifts down from limbs above

“I am here,” I say again.  “I bring no threat.”

“I know,” sighs the tree as I stand naked, watching

            curious to see what will happen next

“Look,” I am told and turn away from blackened bark

            and see two men with shovels cutting a quick

            deep path across the snow, and other trees

                        -- apple, elm and pine –

            moving to form a corridor along the path

            in two long silent regal lines

The arch they make brings the wind

            funneling down the path so hard

            it blows my hair straight up as the blast

            cracks against the crippled tree

and a deafening snap bursts out

as the life line breaks over me