(in memoriam Michael Hamburger, 1924-2007)
The wind plays in the bright grass,
sending this wave then that
in rapid lines that race each other to the edge
or join to a rapid ridge down the middle,
as standout as the angry hairs along a dog’s back.
The grass dulls as the sun draws off,
withdrawing its gold from the now peaceful green,
less agitated by the breeze,
although it is only the shifting light
which makes this seem so. A songbird
goes off automatically in the darkness
of the forest ahead. In the darkness
of the forest he will stand out,
and he is momentarily alert, imagining
himself watched, despite the unlikelihood
that anyone has followed behind or is waiting
up ahead.
The small notebook, fake leather covers
stained burnt orange, would stand out
with or without his pale hands and the unnaturalness
(square-shaped, colorful) endears it to him.
All around is rich darkness. Green moss
slung in provocative shadow on the ground
or hung like pelts where young forks spring up
amid the older, harder trunks.
The lighter green of leaves grows still
as he walks beneath them, fingers of
brown branch straight or arthritic
from nut-round knuckle to knuckle.
The opaque silver of the perimeter,
boxing in the darker trees he is walking towards.
A pool to his left wavers as he moves,
is still when he stops, a buff of reflected cloud
appearing as though its milky source
were underground, pulsing from an opened vein,
arterial in the black mud. A strip of torn cloth
or trompe d’oil memory glances his sight and is gone.
The sudden cotton-pink spires of Wittenberg,
decades’ old sunlight dotting the columns
with perforated gold.
The songbird repeats itself, now behind him,
marking his cautious intervals,
were he so proud.
The forest is corridored with passageways
for smaller creatures, brushes and thorns
clutter and impede, a spider’s web
large enough to trap a human child
screens off the pool at its easterly curve.
The wind plays along the upper branches,
but here on the ground the forest is as quiet
as held breath. He leans towards the expected birdsong,
the notes a quick flutter like match-tips
sparked in the green and heavy darkness,
like a code of music, a signal for the forest
to gasp, to ambush the careless sky.