Tinder Box

(Letter, 26 June 1983 from C.H. By the time that I add my sign to this page the pallid sunlight will have dragged behind the Tree of Birds and spilled long shadows on my lawn.)

 You, who sit beneath your tree of birds

To meld your muse, turn water into wine,

Have endless summers stored against their loss

That you might call

Delighted, into words

Before their fruit has wasted at the vine.

 

You tame your stars, cull every flickered spark

Like glimpses, struck from some old tinder-box

Of what should be, of some essential truth

That you have intercepted

At the arc

Of lightning, gleaned from storms and summer phlox.

 

And through your words, discernment is distilled

In me, to run me ragged at the dawn

Expressing thoughts you sparked in reverie

Beneath your birds,

Within the earth you tilled

That I might spill long shadows at your lawn.

 

David Lewis Paget