Eyesight

Morna Rhys

Eyesight


It was May before my
attention came
to spring and


my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've

missed it, it

came and went before
I got right to see:


don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if


you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain


it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone


A.R. Ammons


It isn't true this year. I haven't missed it. In fact, I was waiting for it, and it seemed to take longer than it should to get here. I think we're a month behind - could be I'm wrong, but that's the impression I have. 

And still, it is passing too fast. The cherry blossoms are beginning to fall, the daffodils and tulips are ragged. Like Ammons says, we could climb higher up the mountain to a colder level and find spring at an earlier stage, we could go North and search for the same, and we could find the place where the blooms are beginning, the buds are not yet open. 

This poem is a bit of a twist to the heart, though.  

"Some things that go are gone".

Ouch.

(last post)

         

Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe

Shorebird-Watching

For S.

 
To more than give names
to these random arrivals--
teeterings and dawdlings
of dunlin and turnstone,
black-bellied or golden
plover, all bound for

what may be construed as
a kind of avian Althing,
out on the Thingstead,

the unroofed synagogue
of the tundra--is already
to have begun to go wrong.

What calculus, what
tuning, what unparsed
telemetry within the
retina, what oversdrive
of hunger for the nightlong
daylight of the arctic,

are we voyeurs of? Our
bearings gone, we fumble
a welter of appearance,
of seasonal plumages
that go dim in winter:
these bright backs'

tweeded saffron, dark
underparts the relic
of what sibylline
descents, what harrowings?
Idiot savants, we've
brought into focus

But Adam, drawn toward
that dark underside,
its mesmerizing
circumstantial thumbprint,
would already have
been aware of this.

 

 

Amy Clampitt 

 

It's not just the question of what the birds think (last post), but how can we think of the birds? The sheer numbers of them! The kinds - "dunlin and turnstone, black-bellied or golden plover", the bewildering migrations- "all bound for what may be construed as a kind of avian Allthing", and gatherings - "out on the Thingstead, the unroofed synagogue of the tundra". What are all these? What pattern are we witness to? What instinct? What marvels are these indicative of?

No one has expressed this consternation quite like Amy Clampitt.