Tuesday, February 15, 2011

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'd 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 a distant
drone of engines, clamoring of the hurried,
a silence through which the clop-clop-clop

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

Today's word: interlude

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