Should I Ever Pass This Way Again

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Should I Ever Pass This Way Again

By William T. Blackburn

Under shade of seckel pear tree, juices on my lips

Sun slipping between leaves, breeze disheveled

As songbird wings, flapping, slapping metronome

Green sheaves unfurled in springtime, scrollwork

A record of this season writ

In summer’s youth

Meadow cat peacock strutting, saunters slyly by

To the deep fields, amid folds of earth hunting

Little mousey morsels upon grain seed fed plump

This microcosm of the universe unfolding cycle

The way all things wander

Among summer’s stars

Stage right: graveyard headstones in dark granite

By decades, sun faded, wind and rain exfoliated

Grandad’s gift: shorter walks each Sunday service

Along the border in restive sleep his final home

Visitations every weekend

At summer’s dusk

With uncles, carried there a casket heavy laden

Inter in that sacred soil Grandma’s tiny frame

Mark down another name for those who remember

Bringing flowers as each year rolls slowly by

In my mind alone now

With summer’s passage

Our old farm, left to suburb subdivision lanes

The honeysuckle and sassafras stripped away

A creeping sadness overshadows: memory born

I cannot walk among orchard trees cut down

Laid to rest on hearths

After summer’s gone

My time slipping steady now, years strolling by

Busied surely daily diatribes and pantomimes

In my suburbia trapped as rat in cage on bookshelf

Admired and derided in equal measures panned

Join that happy host

When summer’s passed

Seasons seem to meld year after year progression

Succession in demi-regular heartbeats sounding

This round-trip visitation: a meeting with oneself

For in my own time, my own mind, a universe found

Alone within this grace

As summer’s depth

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