:from Mary L. Collins, Elmore, Vermont, "love is in a late stage of the world"

 

love is in a late stage of the world*

mary l. collins

Where did you go? Love, I mean?
Once you seemed so loud in my ears, I could not hear
for want and fill of you. 
Now all is quiet. Winter quiet,
when even the suggestion of sound seems ill placed.  
And so, it is,
in a late stage of the world,
in this late stage of the world,
where to express gentility, to cry,
to expose a soft underbelly can get you pummeled.
And so, I will return to Clay Hill where the poet lived,
eeking out a meager living among the farmers, loggers,
and bunion-footed waitresses who never complained. At least
they were good companions and understood 
"not enough money even for postage, chris’sakes!"
Still, he would send a line or two
for the asking, swallowed
by academicians and sycophants
who muscled in on his name and reputation
utterly misunderstanding the kindness of his words.
 
love is in a late stage of the world.
 
I came too late even for that -
about a year or two, I guess.
It would have been such a kick to have known him. 
Together we could have watched the tamaracks turn to gold.

 

 

* excerpted from the poem, Silence, by Hayden Carruth, Collected Shorter Poems,

Copper Canyon Press, 1992