Song for a Seeker

 

 

This is a memory: how,
when I’d left off seeking,
eschewed involvement,
disparaged adventure,
                 one
         wet
unheralded Friday I
descried intact a trove,
         a lode untapped,
of mettlesome rare cut,
                 who
bestowed on me a random
         smile,
a guileless gift of
                 candy and the
thoughtless stray remark
that set upon my cheek
         a veil;
                     then,
as though a slackened
string somewhere went snap,
pulled taut and singing,
                  one
          hot
and wary look we shared,
for here it was, the fretted Grail
no toll could ransom out of
time:
             a tandem soul.

 

 

How glad I’d been, that year, to be
         alone!
But now his soft indulgent
eyes, his measured words
me everywhere did stalk,
and brought me down:
the proud and seasoned hunter
         snared, undone!

 

(Sweet consternation)
How, pale in my deep
green robe, I flew the stairs
to let him in -- a stranger,
         nearly -- one
unnerved, heart-plundered so,
as to declare me fetching!

 

And how, within my sunny
garret, kindle-snug and
shrine-remote, we talked,
refined this mined, this treasured
          pairing
                              -- carefully,
for he was bound away from me
and, clouded with regret, described
his years bereft, his hewn disguise,
             the loveless trap;
the haughty wife who thissed and thatted
coldly and without regard
’til all was ruin: a marriage
         cleft --
                     and in my lap.

 

 

How, after days, and days
        again, again
we talked (though ever less)
                   aloud),
and in our stretching
        toward a center,
                scarcely touching,
tucked and stitched the raveled
edges of our lives
                               together.

 

 

I’d never trusted the idea
of being loved before the chase,
before the searing trek across
self-immolation land;
but in this memory of how
the love I’d sought to raise
               found me
ere I had even -- thrilling --
         caught
the taste of ore at hand:
herein lies the becoming of
               my life, my history.