The Golden Thicket

 


It was like being just below the surface of the water.
It was January, and the wind was like a fleeting rabbit, it kicked snow in my direction from a distance,
I walked up the road
Steep, hard;
To my right I saw
Five bunched thickets of golden wild grass
Fluid and feathery, they wavered in the winter sun
Like a gate, they stood in a line,
A few feet apart each, they looked like pillars of a pier
I stopped, and so did the wind. I cross the street, and pass through the center two sentries.

The thicket is lush, it is golden, it is warm.
In the iced winter, I am enveloped in this pocket of sun
A steep steppe: a gradient ensnared in vines and thorny roses
There are tendrils of rich green that curl the trees
And though the forest is barren, a palate of gray and brown,
The thicket is lush, lush! In January!
I stand on a drainage grate-
A square of raised concrete and metal grille
A drainage grate? Oh! Look- two more,
In succession, in a line,
As if they were pedestals to receive something greater,
As if they were small holy temples
I can see through the grille, water dribbling through the concrete pipe.
To my left, a house of sorts, maybe a temple,
Of vines draped over a small bush-tree;
It creates a little roofed tunnel
I go over and stand underneath the canopy of woven thin branches
It's nice, but there's more to the place-
I go back to the main area
Surrounded by golden grasses
And I go down the hill
And I reach the third and final drainage grate--
It is a platform, held to the sky,
As if it were the place man can touch the heavens--
The view!
Ringing the front of this tiny veranda
Is a dry waterfall in frozen motion-
Stones and large rocks clinging to the side of the hill,
Water trickling at a pace down:
A sharp cliff that falls away,
Totally hidden from view from the street!
It is as if I had come to the gateway to another dimension;
And it was the great winged breast of this new country,
That resided in the middle of the suburbs,
But in this view:
Over the forest, the narrow creek that snaked through,
The tiny ravine that carried the water from the mouth of the falls
The patches of thick ivy that eloped the side of the hill
The fallen tree that got caught on another
And starts at the ground and provides a thick passage to the sky,
All in my neighborhood.