Silent Poetry Reading (late again)

Here is my offering (late once again) for the annual Silent Poetry Reading day:

In a French Mountain Village

Rain, then snow. In the middle
of the stoney street
leading through the village,
an old horse cart stops,
and turns around, its driver
tucking his head in his coat,
yelling at the horse.

November,
assuming the darkness
of winter, clears the mountains
of any warmth. It is here,
alone, I have come to find you,
to find what was lost
on the plains of the midwest, in California,
behind the legend of childhood.

Cold now. The snow
has slipped from the skin of your breasts
and covered everything, the stable,
the mayor's house, those last floweres
huddled outside against the walls
of my room.

Will I find you hear?
No one I've talked to
has seen you, understood
my description of you.
As the day moves on, gets darker,
the moutains seem to fatten, like sheep,
as if all the snow in the world
were falling above me,
on this village.

Toward midnight,
I finally go to bed,
without a clue to your whereaboutes.
By morning, despite my search,
the snow will have ended.


by Richard David Wyatt

Set to music by Jackson Berkey. Here a recording of the Seattle Girls Choir singing one arrangement of it here.