Along the Meadow Stream
The fluffy grasses on the edge
Of the stream hide my drifting line
And fly from the trout. Over the years
A deal of dreaming has drowned
In the limpid water. "Your mooning
Makes no knowledge," my grandfather
Used to tell me. "Let the fish be,
Get back to your books, lazy boy."
His voice has gone two lives away;
It stirs the water no longer along
The banks of the meadow stream.
STANLEY MOSS
N ear Machpelah/Hebron
It
was not a dream, a poet
led me down into the earth
where the sea in another age
had hollowed out a mountain.
He led me into a cave of marble cloud:
colossal backs, shoulders, thighs of reclining Gods.
Just above us a battle field four thousand years old,
some olive trees and wild flowers.
I can not believe these Gods need
more than an occasional lizard,
or the sacrifice of a dove that comes to them
through jags and crevices.
Madness to think the Gods
are invisible, in us, and worth fighting for
- if they want anything I suppose,
it is for the sea to come back again.
