The Abandoned Shade

Walking the abandoned shade

of childhood’s habitations,

my ears remembering chime,

hearing their buried voices.

Hearing original summer,

the birdlit banks of dawn,

the yellow-hammer beat of blood

gilding my cradle eyes.

Hearing the tin-moon rise

and the sunset’s penny fall,

the creep of frost and weep of thaw

and bells of winter robins.

Hearing again the talking house

and the four vowels of the wind,

and midnight monsters whispering

in the white throat of my room.

Season and landscape’s liturgy,

badger and sneeze of rain,

the bleat of bats, and bounce of rabbits

bubbling under the hill:

Each old and echo-salted tongue

sings to my backward glance;

but the voice of the boy, the boy I seek,

within my mouth is dumb.