Clearing, at Hogback
What brought us closer was the ride along 9-West in the fog from Brattleboro to Bennington, curves of the macadam unwinding through thick forest, one pitched hillside after another, droplets of mist visible in the air, until bolts of sunlight ignited the contours of the sloping ridges, illuminating the gold and russet leaves, but it was Mount Equinox that left us breathless, the enormity of its expanse stretching beyond church spires to fill such an immensity of sky, how it looms, more of a guide than a shadow, not so much over but above the land; mid-October’s biblical coat of many colors filling its bulk, the parameters of it stretching to rest its immensity across the horizon. What filled you was finding the gem in the antique store on Main Street, the brass candlestick, that you could polish when you returned home, carrying the prize trophy claimed to celebrate the triumph of the day. Although what brought us closest was corroborating which peak it was where you felt the ledge drop off, which we couldn’t see in the fog driving up, but that had cleared by the time we were on our way back, that we realized we had stopped at twenty years earlier, how we stood enrapt in the view, from Hogback, the undulation of the land which made us exhale reverentially, and that prompted me to catch you as you stumbled on a hillock before the stonewall along the ledge, providing an occasion to look and see what was before us, what we had these years, even if you couldn’t recall all of it anymore, even if we had squandered some of it, both of us understood that is not what mattered, that what mattered at that moment, scanning the panoramic view in astonishment, was that we were finally present for what brought us even closer.
Inflorescence
Sparkling morning, simmering wind in the trees, the coolness of autumn moving in under the late summer warmth, the air and the light struck with a lucidity, a transparency upon which the sky, if it were glass, and if it were painted blue, could not break because of its light being so supple, so pure in its being pliable, light glittering across Long Pond, water lilies floating in pale green clusters, stippled with opened pink and white flower hearts, our acutely being aware of time passing, and as quickly as one diamond is reflected across the pond another appears to take its place, as each branch of the hophornbeam languishes in the intermittent stillness before it moves again in the slightest breeze, as you ask me again if I am present, and I answer you, yes, you who live more in the present each day, more alive in the passing of memory, a slight smile playing across your stoic face, marking your resilience, as you watch every nuance of the simmering wind with its underlying autumn coolness rising through the impermanence of the light glistening through the inflorescence of rocking clusters of timothy.
Author of more than forty collections of poetry and prose, Wally Swist’s latest books include Of Angels: Poems & Translations (Finishing Line Press), Aperture (Kelsay Books), and If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press).