In Bloom, Where the Meadow Rises

Nathaniel Perry

Do you remember when the sky burned down

its wick of light as an April cold came on

the evening of your fifth day in the world?

Of course you don't, you couldn't even hold

your head up yet, much less begin to think

to hold one evening's ash inside, like a drink

held up to the sun, trapping and clutching the light.

But I wonder sometimes if within the slighter

corners of your mind you've held a hint of it,

the light I saw beyond the trees which split

the view from our rented front porch, while you

slept, swaddled as if in song, through

the louder sleep of your mother beside you. Rache,

if you can find that evening, which is stationed

in my chest, inside you now, I swear it will

get you somewhere, across a field so filled

with snow the sky and ground are one, across

a field so bleached with drought the giant cross

of shadows from the pines is friction（摩擦力） enough

to set the day on fire. You'll come, rough

in your heart, to the edges of those fields and be lifted

just a fraction of an inch by the gift

of the sky's old light in you. It will remind

you to invite yourself, the whole of your mind,

the whole history of your self along across

the grass. If you see yourself you can't be lost;

though I may lose sight of you against the sky,

or in the vetch（野豌豆，巢菜）, in bloom, where the meadow rises.