A musty feel for the ancient
Took possession of this child
     of Virginia,
Where every field of play
Was a field of ghosts from
     the dying battles’
Dripping carts, dripping air,
     dripping red earth,
And the dripping sun’s slant
     in Fall.

When I was a boy,
I lived near wilderness,

and on cold, bittersweet,
windy-sky days
I sometimes ventured out by myself

to sit
and feel
and smell
the crisp wind,

and I could feel myself

in the trees,
in the sharp,
rotted-quartz rocks

and the red clay earth.

where once was singing
a fallen wren’s nest baking
on sunny blacktop

In the still churchyard,
a blood-red blossom—
April morning.

Tall, top-heavy pine
displays its fine head to the clouds—
they pay no attention.

Cactus flower thorn
divides a falling raindrop
in two.

the clouds tonight
once white, floating in blue skies
reappear
in the dark, in the light
from a waning moon