Classic Poem

On leave, I sat on marsh grass, watched
bees tremble into new red blooms,
and thought of how, a boy, I'd put
my finger on the backs of bees.
Engrossed, they didn't notice me,
and I, careful, wouldn't touch them long,
a second or two, but long enough
to feel the hard hum of their wings.
I never got stung. Clifford did.
And Mother whipped me with a belt
for showing him my trick. He asked.
She was more dangerous than bees,
and danger was what fascinated me
so much I'd wait until a bee
crawled in a morning glory bloom.
I'd pinch the flower shut and shake
the bloom, loving the angry buzz,
the danger I had trapped. The war
has killed that stupid fascination —
" D-E-D, dead, " as Father says.

Blue as blood hidden in the body,
storm winds tore at oak leaves, which raged
like green birds limed to whipping limbs.
Dead limbs dislodged. Pine cones and acorns
swept toward me as I shut my eyes,
lay underneath an oak, and listened.
They sounded like a giant's feet
approaching, blundering from the west.
A thick branch skittered through the limbs
and hit six inches from my head.
I lay there through the storm, got drenched,
took off my clothes, and draped them on
a redbud tree. As they dried, I,
nude, played my flute. I caught
the trills and cadence of the birds
and was rewarded when a far
wood thrush responded to my music,
not note for note, not harmony,
but just enough to let me know
I'd swayed, a little bit, her song.

As I reached for my clothes, sunset
— red as blood liberated from the body —
fell over me, and, from the redbud tree,
a clumsy panicked bird, a cardinal,
exploded. One wingtip brushed my chest
an inch below the nipple, and,
in that red light off blood-red things
— blooms, bird — my whole white body turned
to flame, an ignis fatuus ,
will-o'-the-wisp, a brief, bright light
that flickers on the marsh and means
delusion , which is my greatest gift.

Near home, the fields were bright with fire.
A farmer burning off his land
had walked the border of the marsh,
plunging a torch into the underbrush.
But where a dozen fires converged
I found a bright green tulip tree.
Leaves quivered in the winds that whipped
across the closing fires, then flared,
like torches, one by one, before
flames even touched them. Inside
the green wood, hot sap chortled, sang,
until the branches blew apart
like overheated cannon. The tree
was opening itself to fire.
I watched. I stood and watched as it
was blasted in the burning air.
The trunk collapsed, broke into embers.
Their tiny lights sprawled constellations
across the smoldering black earth.
As they consumed themselves, went dark,
the true stars came out, one beyond the next,
and in redbuds beyond burnt ground
a bobwhite sang its stupid, cheerful name.