Staying at Haan's

Today's poem grew out of an interlude Phyllis and I enjoyed in celebration of our golden wedding anniversary ... thanks to the generosity of our family ...

What a wonderful interlude it was. I don't want to spoil the moment by dissecting the poem ... please, just read it ... and I hope, while you're doing that, you hear the gentle clop-clop-clop of those horses.

Originally published in Plainsongs:

STAYING AT HAAN'S

It was as though we had escaped to another
age, back to a time before TV or radio,
when news came to us from ships gliding

surely, softly up to the gull-laden docks,
when bicycles roamed the streets carrying
stacks of luggage, a forgotten letter, a loaf

of freshly-baked bread, a time of lovers
pedaling slowly past, oblivious of all else.
It was a time in the embrace of silence

like it was meant to be, not even the distant
drone of engines, the clamoring of the hurried,
a silence through which the clop-clop-clop

of horses came drifting in the night, a lullaby
reassuring to those unaccustomed to such
an absolute absence of the clutter of noise.
© 2005

Today's word: interlude