by admin » Mon Sep 16, 2013 6:35 pm
Boatman, by Charles Carreon
This autumn!
Mild and warm, blustery,
Day after day light and warmth prevail,
carrying on beyond their time,
Like lovers whose bond of ecstasy,
Not breaking, becomes more exquisite
with succeeding moments,
Each one drawn out lightly as a thread of silk
Unraveled from summer's cocoon.
Like a boatman who finds a stream
of clear blue sky
Running through drifting islets of dark cumulus,
And, skirting delicately those touches of frost
That would stiffen oars and rudder,
Averts the entrance of ice.
The prow parts delicately the floating mosaic
Of leaves that overcover the stream,
A stream so still as to seem directionless.
Yet the boatman is rowing
With gentle strokes upstream,
His back to the mountain of ice.
Out from the stern spreads a wedge
of ripples, and the oars with every stroke
Leave twin vortices swirling with captured leaves,
Whirling together, and unwinding into openness,
Like compasses in search of the pole.