Summer: Two Postcards Home

by

William W. Morgan

1. June 15.

A tiny dry fly found me one

last-chance trout tonight--

just at dark, in a mighty wind:

the stars stood still and watched,

but everything else thrashed

about, beating the blind

and arbitrary air. I wanted you

there, whipping black night

and wrinkled water beside me.

 

2. August 17.

I climbed today through sunlight

so yellow you could stroke it

onto Blagdon Hill, then Bullbarrow above

the Blackmoor Vale, and White Nothe

over opal-blue-green Weymouth Bay:

the chattering gulls are in from the shore,

following the plow and gorging

on earthworms; blackberries, rich

as wine, speckle the dark hedgerows,

fall off at a touch in your hands.

All day a ghost has hung just

out of sight, whispering: this must be

what it feels like to die--to stand

on a high hill with the wind in your face

and think How achingly beautiful

it all is.

I’m coming home, my love.

 

The Thomas Hardy Journal, XIII:2 (May 1997): 34-5