an encounter

Shall I still wait here by the grass

for glimpsing once more at your limbs,

or keep the way I came, which dims

for new hopes you would repass?

I do not wish your joy- which trims

the vague field's furrows with the neat

adornment of your snapping feet-

to be disturbed by my whims:

      

but as I saw how fast a fleet

of scuffling leaves their whirling took

to mime your hazel fleece, I shook

with eagerness to see your treat

       

and lingered for another look,

that in being sure it is now you

I'd give the meeting its bright due

of bronzed rhymes on a blown-up fluke.

Meanwhile, I think that what I knew

of this haggard road I cross

t'evade from duties, and their dross,

as vain rest lets ere I renew

frail laughs at t'unconsumed ease loss,

where just the scrubbiest of weeds

bear to entrust its fuzzy seeds

on a stale soil that highways toss

from crammed exchanges of their beads

to stitch the crumbles they excrete,

As works from work reek and deplete

the land with languid, sterile speeds --

was, without you, incomplete.

perhaps you wisely chose this ground

for th' inert waste that would redound 

with springs of your oppeselss beat-

which bellowed veil has stiffness drowned-,

as it seeps through leprous furrows,

that grew unwilling till the burrows

of your ghost have sealed their wound,

and with invisible perfumes flows

to string the turfs of grass with gold

of pollens lavished on the tolled

end to cupped draughs that hallows

your looming.  Could have I foretold

that lurking in this view I held

to be so true in its compelled

simplicity, there was the mould

of an embracing vision, welled

within the doting mind of nature,

to spout from chances the yearned suture

for th' outward truth by inner doubts yelled?

I feel more than my senses capture,

and in the sceneries I foster

the hues are mellower and fluster

brighter blessing where I venture,

as every strain and nerve together

is stirred, from the weed yellow rib

to my eyes blue veins that sip

the thunder's fibril in the weather,

and diapasoned th' angelic crib,

where the blank womb of light breaks

in the finned rainbow veering flakes,

loured on the tillers tethered drip

that funnels stillness with the quakes

kneading your whiskers'. 'this th' easel

that suspended leagues does bustle

with snuggling that your sniffing shakes,

for me that wait, and whimsies warble

for the fields you whirl, dear weasel.