Prodigal Summer - Snow In Mexico
Where the rats long fed
Sweep out our shame-and in its place
We'll make a bower for love
A splendid marriage-bed fragrant
With flowers aquiver for the Spring
And when he comes
Our murdered dreams shall wake
And when he comes
All the mute birds shall sing
Rhododendron slick
And now climbing into an old-growth
Forest whose steepness had spared it from ever being logged
But even here
Where a good oak-hickory
Canopy sheltered the ridge top
Last night's rain had pounded
Through hard enough to obscure the tracks
She knew the animal's size
From the path it had left
Through the glossy undergrowth of mayapples
What after the flashlight
Oh I give you all
Oh I give you all
What after the flashlight
Oh I give you all
Hey here fall
And now climbing into an old-growth
Forest whose steepness had spared it from ever being logged
But even here
Where a good oak-hickory
Canopy sheltered the ridge top
Last night's rain had pounded
Through hard enough to obscure the tracks
She knew the animal's size
From the path it had left
Through the glossy undergrowth of mayapples
And that was enough to speed up her heart
It could be what she'd been looking for these two years and more
This lifetime
But to know for sure she needed details
Especially the faint claw mark beyond the toe pad that distinguishes canid from feline
That would be the first thing to vanish in a hard rain
So it wasn't going to appear to her now
However hard she looked
Now it would take more than tracks
And on this sweet damp morning at the beginning of the world
That was fine with her
She could be a patient tracker
Eventually the animal would give itself away with a mound of scat
Which might have dissolved in the rain too