A Bohemian Song of an Old Ohioan Crabapple

 

On the edge of the Cuyahoga Valley woods,

as it is quite common at this time and place,

an old crabapple snows out with its bloom

like a mind that is back—in its one own moment,

 

giving—giving out once more a whiff, a scent,

signs of some ancient, pure, ever recurring dream

that could letter once more a song, a sigh, a poem

that too could have—would have broken free.

 

Oh, do we too bear ourselves within some such light,

stored restoring beauties’ prints, wrapped in white

& meant to come out only in wonder of brief whiles

to be seen, heeded, seized when a mind and a Muse

 

bridge once more their fatal gap and brush and graze

and taste and stroke one another, and if not—

then something great, too great to be named

would have to wither, die, pass, or go—

 

like an echo, like a shade cast off from its source,

like blossom barred from its animating light

or a soul locked once more in a voiceless night,

once more missed, unseen, unsung, unsent, unhealed—