An Excerpt from Conversation
For Maud
–How old?
It was completely inadvertent.
It was more or less late afternoon.
and I came over a hilltop
and smack in front of me was the sunset.
–Couldn’t you have turned around and gone back?
Wherever you turn, a window
in a childhood house fills with fire.
–Remember the pennies we put on the track,
how the train left behind only the bright splashes?
Everything startles with its beauty
when assigned value has been eradicated,
especially if the value assigned is one cent.
–Does the past ever get too heavy to lug around?
If your rucksack is too heavy, it could
wrestle you down backwards.
–Does it ever get lighter?
Yes, when so-called obsolete words
start falling off the back end of the language.
(from the Galway Kinnell collection, Strong Is Your Hold)
Kanlaon 