From Falconry and Other Poems, extended edition. (c) 2016 John Wm. Houghton.

An Ode on Saint Cuthbert’s Day

I.

At last, I stood atop the central tower
Of Durham, out of breath, but breathless, too,
In looking down at cloister, palace, close,
And further, to the valley of the Wear,
Where rushing water glinted in the sun.

It was the morning of St. Cuthbert’s day.
I’d sat in Quire at Morning Prayer, and read
The lessons, half-distracted by the sound
Of my own voice rebounding from the stone
Of mammoth columns crouched around me then
And now supporting my high vantage point.

I’d prayed at Cuthbert’s shrine, and at the tomb
Of Bede, the saint who’d drawn me to the North.
It seemed that one should feel, in such a place,
Surrounded by such triumphs of the skill
Of human hand and mind, immersed in such
A rush of nature’s radiance, and born up
By such great sanctity as Cuthbert, Bede,
And all the holy common folk of God
Had brought to this one piece of rocky ground—
It seemed I ought to catch my second wind,
To feel some inspiration. I felt none—
No more than when an early nightingale
Had sung out as I strolled through empty streets
The Saturday before, in Winchester
(Where Keats himself had walked one autumn day),
Or when I’d climbed up Glastonbury Tor
And stared across wide swaths of daffodils
Southeastward toward an unseen Camelot.

II.

I hadn’t planned to turn my vacation into a search for some spirit that blows,
Even for Wordsworth, starting his Prelude, just as it chooses, and not as we will:
Now, though, I felt the lack of it, like the gap of a cavity under my tongue.

Wordsworth was coming back to the scenes of childhood from years in the city, and I
Followed his lead by rushing to London: Monday I flew out of Heathrow for home.
Once at O’Hare, I got on a bus and rode through Chicago, where snow was still piled
(Most of it ice now) glossy and dirty, melting by inches in spite of the cold.
Out in the country, fields were appearing, dark and unplanted (I thought as we passed):
This was Fitzgerald’s sleeping republic, land of my birth and soil of my dreams.
Here, if at all, I’d find what escaped me during my travels: or it would find me.

III.

The driver let me off out north of town:
The nearest station’s at the county seat,
And if I go that far I have to call
A cab to bring me back; it’s easier
To walk, albeit with a carry-on.

The first thing that I came to on the way
Was Poplar Grove, the graveyard. There was still
A fair amount of daylight, so I took
A shortcut through the grounds. Our family plot
Makes up the southeast corner, near my house,
Because we started burying our dead
On that side of the home place long before
We even thought of platting out the town.
My twice-great-grandfather’s black obelisk
Predominates; two simple marble slabs
Commemorate his parents, who first came
From Winchester in 1824.
My parents, and the twins, my brothers, lie
Two rows behind the patriarch and immigrants,
And there, already marked off, is my place,
Beside a cousin who was drowned in cheese
Back when we owned the only dairy here.

I said a prayer, and as I walked on home,
Considered what, when I should be rolled ‘round
With rocks and stones in earth’s diurnal course,
Some traveler might find above my grave.

I can’t say that I thought of anything
Before, in my own bed again at last,
I fell into a long and dreamless sleep.

IV.

There really is a lilac bush outside
The back door of the home place, and the house
Was built, in fact, before the Civil War.
And yet I doubt these very flowers and leaves
Brought green and purple richness to the spring
That Eliot in exile found so cruel,
Much less to Whitman’s April. But they bloom
For me, and have done since I was a child.

I like them for the way the florets make
A shape that isn’t there, a volume sketched
By fancy in the service of the mind’s
Desire to know a world that has no gaps,
As moments of our being sketch out lives
Until we fill the gaps prepared for us.