Sketch
A poem. "The organized glamour of their sky-furrow..."
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The clear light of September glazed my face
As I stepped out with a throaty, chuckling can
To water what was blooming, and heard a clan
Of flying goose wings on their annual race.
The vertigo of their swinging so low,
Klaxon calls shattering the hard blue air,
The organized glamour of their sky-furrow
Unlacing the quiet till it disappeared.
What was it I was meant to hear? The sound
Spirited its meaning south on thermals
That hinted at the bright and half-eternal,
Over seas, over mountains while I stayed aground.
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This is delightful. The "What was it..." question is teasing me with echoes I can't quite reconstruct--I thought of Robert Frost's "For Once, Then, Something," but that's not quite right. It won't surprise you that I also thought of a couple of Richard Wilbur poems. His "A Sketch" is one of my favorites (I love to describe this one to students as written in three-line stanzas rhymed abba). Your juxtaposition of organization with furrow reminds me also of some of the images in "Plain Song for Comadre." You'll understand, of course, that my comparison of your poem with others is part of the pleasure of reading for me, and not at all a suggestion that your poem is not its own lovely thing! (I, for one, would like to see you collect your recent stuff into a print version that I could have on my shelf to conveniently return to.)