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10
from
The Heat Lightning
(1967)
Second Evening
The sense of the real thirty years back in this clearness --
I could hold with my eyes, it seemed, the body
of the air; it was like standing at a fast stream
up in the mountains, seeing down through the water skin,
through the fi ne streakings of light, gripping in my vision
the whole crystalline heaviness of the water -- clearness
right down to the toothed edges of the elm leaves,
almost black, stationary against the streaked colors
in the sky; cats emerged from under the granary, and taking
no notice of us, disappeared in high weeds; Seeley's Lake
started shining through the mild darkness; lights came on
near it, an uptilted glitter; heart's desire picked up.
About then I might stand up casually, half thinking
of those cats out in the weeds, and with hands in pockets
take a turn out on the lawn, and stop, and seem to myself
to be in the clear dark like a trout in its pool.
Later, air movement in the elm: night proper had begun.
One or two of us would rise, re-enter the house; and others
follow, I too, and meet in my turn, at the threshold,
the shock of the day's heat held still in the house.