Heartworn happiness, fine line that winds <br />among the tapestry’s old blacks and blues, <br />bright hair blazing in the theater, <br />red hair raving in the bar—as now <br />the little leaves shoot veils of gold <br />across the trees’ bones, shroud of spring, <br />ghost of summer, shadblow snow, blood- <br />russet spoor spilled prodigal on last year’s leaves . . . <br />When your yellows, greens, and yellow-greens, <br />your ochres and your umbers have evolved <br />nearly to hemlock blackness, cypress blackness, <br />when the woods are rife with soddenness <br />(unfolded ferns, skunk cabbage by the stream, <br />barberry by the trunks, and bitter <br />watercress inside the druid pool) <br />will your thin, still-glinting thread insist <br />to catch the eye in filigreed titrations <br />stitched along among beneath the branches, <br />in the branches where it lives all winter, <br />occulted fire, brief constant fleeting gold . . .<br /><br />Jonathan Galassi<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thread-5/
