Here we find nature to be the circumstance
which dwarfs every other circumstance,
and judges like a god all men that come to her.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I’ve hunted your angels, tracked them
back through thunderhead and snow,
winter’s gold, the too-bright mornings
of spring. Let me hear their silvered wings
break across your mirrored body;
let me find them
sailing through your crystal eye.
Filled with this solemn light, I am
your rimmed floor and glass-top lake—
your coyotes and dark aqueducts.
Praise the blue hours you send down,
heavy with moonlight and rain.
Praise whatever you cast me from—
goldenrod and feather, sour river water—
your fingers, how they shaped me
into a son you could not keep.
Behind my eyelids, your hills.
Beyond your cobblestones and synagogues,
your mayflowers blooming, a mercy.
Your city busses and brawls, Boston,
harbor-hushed, trying to let us sleep.
Praise what I keep from childhood—
taste blood, smell of iron—how the wind
wades through your low, gray skies
like grief: each gust rushing the tops of trees
as clouds roll off the bay like a fleet.
Praise morning plows, the spray of salt,
the accent I lost years ago.
When I am old, my friends will die inside of you.
When I am old, I will draw myself back.
You lie behind me, yet you follow me still.
You cradle the coast, you end in the field.
