The timber they kept back
I.
The wild yerba tree
with bird-life:
The drink is prepared
boiling water over a spoonful
of leaves.
Yerba gathers. We
from the shore.
Of water lilies,
a white flower (resembling
the orange blossom.)
Nearer a mild climate
riverbathing
sounded into night.
Girls carried lace frames
to predict the wind.
And only on the waters,
(it is their own story)
the timber they kept back.
Or that insect,
our nights in these.
The second child
in sketched muslin.
These are the simplest textiles,
early stages,
of the rivers themselves.
We enter barefoot,
our shoes in boxes
beneath the floor.
To whose special history?
On the foothills, East
we catch the moisture.
The difference past rooms
into cedar and pine.
I recall the name.
Old stone houses,
of an ancient weathered appearance.
II.
Women wait beneath branches.
(The rivers laid down
in Dutch charts are only creeks.)
We, in the boat,
extending Northward from the land.
In the distance go
picking flowers
themselves and fall slowly.
One morning, a story
of walking in the apple orchard.
We are replaced at this point in the journey
with skins, sinews and bones of sheep.
Its blossoms, the variegated rose,
with her,
as the Rowan trees planted
encircling a house.
She refers to the edges of a waterhole.
With the sequence of foothills,
and a forest belt,
I think of larger canoes.
(This voice in summer's light.)
III.
(They will urge her soon to write
her name in a book.)
Outside she gathers branches
to walk the hopyard.
Three days a fever
and She carried to the river
one morning about sunrise.
There is a boat
were days on a frozen field.
The white wall rose blooms. As
the flower of the crape myrtle
has and is everywhere open.
Another branch of the river runs Northward
in a region of scattered trees.
(Their grey faces to the windows.)
Songs of birds, to follow the road.
Transported to another quarter
of the fine old half-timbered dwelling.
IV.
Its blossoms with her,
a remedy strained from herbs.
On the slopes of a flowering meadow:
Think of sea-weed
and larger footprints beyond
the threshold.
Two women dream:
Point-blank,
her birthplace pulled down.
Seven years and the smell of powder.
The large sparrow sings.
Who admired strange birds than this?
We stand the shade,
insect sounds,
but the oaks are motionless.
She fed marmalade and conserves
to the sick.
(The chronicles on church walls.)
A voyage, to wit, the young mountain woman
down from the hill frams
to become the ground.
(There is a sparrow that wakes
seven minutes sooner than the lark.)
It is a bird of the mountains.
On the contents of her basket,
in short,
her inward parts.
A mid-wife whose chamber
faced westward.
Here are the blossoms of the apricot
and she toward the window,
outstripping sea-men with heavy steps.
We move southward by means of a creek
which comes out in the form of a spring.
She recalls the name
and river obstacles
six days after the moon has passed.
V.
The canal too far
with downcast eyes.
This morning the squabbling
of wild geese
and a half-mile of green.
At dusk our chartered
haven for bird-life
of rain Northward at four miles.
Under bridges to summer's haze.
The rain begins.
(A row of crape myrtles line
what was the dooryard of an old house place.)
Here, a grove of sumacs
North and blackberries we pick in rain.
Not to sell these woods.
It is dark countryside.
We trace the old routes when nights still freeze
and the sap rises.
This is a staple sweet
whose narrowboats were dark.
He courted her three years
up and down the canals.
And they say April,
who flock.
Jacobs home page
River geography at first hand
An error in geography
Things not explicitly remembered
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