In an Old Garden

July 24, 1999

Some cloudy, colorless November day,
When leaves are down and odd uneven gray
Lines show up where recently a lush
Wall of impenetrable underbrush
Obscured all sign of such impediments
As constitute a fieldstone garden fence,
With autumn over, winter unarrived,
You stumble on whatever has survived
Of old New England farms: the border cairns
That mark an orchard gone to woods; a barn's
Mere outline; perhaps a hollow to surprise
The foot, telling how wells internalize
Themselves; and—look!—one sky-blue cupid's dart
That given time will learn its rime by heart.

George Bradley

Charivaria / Poems / July 24, 1999