For Henry

1
When I sit these days—
Or walk—
And wait for a poem
Mostly it’s a child that comes.
Saying, for instance,
Just past the rabbit in her sorry cage,
The convolvulus and the white roses,
I carry you?
Putting words in my mouth
And offering up the burden of himself in response.
Or…

Straight from throwing what’s left of yesterday to the hens
and loosing them into their yard, I walk
to the cowshed and I bank
a fire in the stove in the room
where by now in years now gone
sixty cows would already have stood
and let themselves be milked and sent back to the paddock and the river and I walk
back to the house…