As I Listen to the Music of My Youth, Beside the Backyard Pond

Again I watch dismayed
As the snow melts below my striken feet.
Wavering cloud draped upon wavering pond
All the sun long.

The tingling insects creep,
Raspy muskrat plays and wallows.
Dry straw floor shivering,
Wooden fingers of the brown trees,
Shiver on the pond surface.

Again the atomic summer,
Again the rotting flush.

How do I conduct myself again,
Stiff or shrunken?

Eyed tingled, bone cracked,
Muscle cramped, skin ripped,
Blotted, dryness, wetness,
Fibrous sinewed,
Chaotic coalescenced,
Twirling madness,
Conspired and cast
Upon orchestra,
All the wind long.

Heaven and hell banished
By the logs floating across the pond;
Again the tree wears another ring,
Again my green leaves grow darker.