Like something almost being said,

(someone said, I think, and grieving)

came waking (and dying),

green,

from the whiteness of its winter bed.

 

But suddenly summer brought the days of forgetting,

drunken, heedless, happy

A new sun at noon

before the old one had even finished setting

 

And now, on the back end,

(the white man waiting leaning on his cane

at the edge of our browning fields)

I have expected

the quiet slow dying simmer of life and back to white again

 

But how can I have once more forgotten that it ends this way:

that by some endless river

the world has woken old

from its green drunken dream under a changing tree

and now, furious shining and windy,

and green and gold and red, and cold

it is bellowing, like something halfway said

“This is what I meant to say -