"For shade to shade will come too drowsily / And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul"

Time again for a Poetry Monday:


Confiteor: A Country Song, Patricia Monaghan

Evening. Red sky. Standing at the door
I sense a shadow presence here:
the one who loved this land before.

These harmless hills bear scars of war.
Someone stood here, full of fear.
This is not a metaphor.

Above me, turkey vultures soar;
below the garden, seven deer.
Someone loved this land before,

loved it as I do, maybe more.
She did not simply disappear
and she is not a metaphor:

This was some woman’s home before
pale soldiers came to clear
a land that someone loved before.

What to do with facts like this? Ignore
them? Hope they disappear?
Someone loved this land before.
None of this is metaphor.


---L.

Subject quote from "Ode on Melancholy," John Keats.