From Bearsville to Palestine

December 7, 1982

Mountain laurel sassafras fox grapes and lilies still more trees than my tongue has room for pour out oxygen day after day and I breathe in deeply this day walking thinking: homeland past the old rock walls grown green with vine hearing jets roar low over other hills of home and it must be almost night now in that land where trees survive but breathing won't while here beside the rushing water where a flat-leafed reed pokes up I wait for sunset thinking homeland where a heart was and if the bombing has started yet.