- for Heather -
Somewhere down the road
there’s a spot which takes a bend
beyond which debts are cancelled on whatever you did lend
before you slowed around the bend,
around the bend.
If you get so far
you will know it by the well
where gather all your former thoughts and all the debts they tell.
Do you suppose you’ll know them well,
you’ll know them well?
Some of them are red,
some are blue and some are green –
and some of them resemble selves you’ve heard but haven’t seen.
And there the grass is tall and green,
is tall and green.
Some betoken luck,
others hope, still others fear.
Although they mingle each with each the closer that you near,
you’ll tell yourself it’s not to fear,
it’s not to fear.
Can you hear it, Sis –
alter-pattern of my flesh?
Oh can you hear it gurgle up ahead behind the mesh?
And does it cool and soothe the flesh,
and soothe the flesh?
Nothing isn’t known –
else it doesn’t come to speech.
Although you may opine a certain sense is out of reach,
you’ll find such thoughts will come to speech,
will come to speech.
Heather! Closest kin,
first companion, dearest Sis –
the heather at the well is there for you to think on this:
that you’re their Sis, your brothers’ Sis,
their only Sis.