Forgotten Ground Regained
Song for a Seeker
This is a memory: how,when I’d left off seeking,eschewed involvement,disparaged adventure, one wetunheralded Friday Idescried intact a trove, a lode untapped,of mettlesome rare cut, whobestowed on me a random smile,a guileless gift of candy and thethoughtless stray remarkthat set upon my cheek a veil; then,as though a slackenedstring somewhere went snap,pulled taut and singing, one hotand wary look we shared,for here it was, the fretted Grailno toll could ransom out oftime: a tandem soul.
How glad I’d been, that year, to be alone!But now his soft indulgenteyes, his measured wordsme everywhere did stalk,and brought me down:the proud and seasoned hunter snared, undone
(Sweet consternation)How, pale in my deepgreen robe, I flew the stairsto let him in -- a stranger, nearly -- oneunnerved, heart-plundered so,as to declare me fetching!
And how, within my sunnygarret, kindle-snug andshrine-remote, we talked,refined this mined, this treasured pairing -- carefully,for he was bound away from meand, clouded with regret, describedhis years bereft, his hewn disguise, the loveless trap;the haughty wife who thissed and thattedcoldly and without regard’til all was ruin: a marriage cleft -- and in my lap.
How, after days, and days again, againwe talked (though ever less aloud),and in our stretching toward a center, scarcely touching,tucked and stitched the ravelededges of our lives together.
I’d never trusted the ideaof being loved before the chase,before the searing trek acrossself-immolation land;but in this memory of howthe love I’d sought to raise found meere I had even -- thrilling -- caughtthe taste of ore at hand:herein lies the becoming of my life, my history.
Copyright © Rebecca Henry Lowndes, 1987.
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