There was an apple tree in the yard -- <br />this would have been <br />forty years ago -- behind, <br />only meadows. Drifts <br />of crocus in the damp grass. <br />I stood at that window: <br />late April. Spring <br />flowers in the neighbor's yard. <br />How many times, really, did the tree <br />flower on my birthday, <br />the exact day, not <br />before, not after? Substitution <br />of the immutable <br />for the shifting, the evolving. <br />Substitution of the image <br />for relentless earth. What <br />do I know of this place, <br />the role of the tree for decades <br />taken by a bonsai, voices <br />rising from the tennis courts -- <br />Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut. <br />As one expects of a lyric poet. <br />We look at the world once, in childhood. <br />The rest is memory.<br /><br />Louise Gluck<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/nostos/
