Friday, June 4, 2010

Poem: A Year in Vermont


A Year In Vermont


You have lived here a year now,
far from the place you were born,
raised, married, suffered, divorced,
and emerged broken

but stronger, pieced together
in this new landscape,
where every vista, every conversation

is different, where even in the bright sunlight,
there is fog,
where you see little, know little,
where the slightest turn

takes you into discovery and lostness, where
you can dance in candlelight
and no one notices, where
you blend in, or at least

almost, where snow piles high in the winter,
higher and colder than you imagined, yet
that very cold makes the spring
more glorious and vibrant, where

summers are short, yet perfect, where
the death of fall shouts from the mountains
like the gleeful cry of a child on a swing, where
your heart is challenged

by newness and fears you never imagined,
growing from the ashes of a life lost
by folly and frailty, it is a place
that is more than a place,

but an adventure that runs deeper
than most could believe, deeper
than a change of scenery,
it is a change of soul.

And so you sit on your front porch,
gazing over the abandoned quarry
at the walls of slate, mountainous high,
grey, yet not forbidding,

but pocked with flowers and grasses
crawling from the cracks, reaching
for the light in the same way
you have done in coming here, reaching

through the rubble to a new place
to grow and transform, flower by flower,
change by change, grey to color,
knowing eternity is not a roar
but a whisper.

=============

Yes, dear readers, it really has been a year since I left my beloved Virginia to come here to Vermont. Time flies. Life changes. It's all an adventure.

The picture was taken near Rupert Vermont. It is hay-making season here, and you can see the rows of silage in the fields with the warm sun. You can click on the image for a larger version.

Tom

4 comments:

Tess Kincaid said...

"...knowing eternity is not a roar but a whisper"

I love that. Enjoy that ethereal fog.

FireLight said...

"reaching for the light..."
something you do so well in your poems and in your photographs...I always have to enlarge your images and study all the details...thank you!

gingerhillery@mac.com said...

Congratulations! One year, hard to believe. Seems like just the other day you were getting ready for the big move. I am very happy for you.

Unknown said...

Hi Tom,

"your heart is challenged

by newness and fears you never imagined,
growing from the ashes of a life lost
by folly and frailty"

I like the recognition and acceptance in this phrase. Congrats on your first year!