Corydon & Alexis

shepherdboy?   not the most salient image for contemporary readers nor most available.   unless you’re thinking brokeback mountain : a reference already escaping.   I did love a montana man, though no good shepherd rather: a caveman, came spelunking into that grotto I’d retreated to what light he bore illumined such small space—physically, temporally and did he have a grove of beech trees? no, no grove but together we found an old-growth stand of   redwood we gouged each other’s chests instead of wood:   pledges that faded he was not cruel nor I unwitting.   but what endures beyond any thicket? example: he took me to the ocean to say farewell.   I mean me: farewell to ocean the ocean, for that matter, to me.   us both fatigued, showing signs of wreckage and that man I had loved stood back from the edge of things he did not hold me I expected not to be held we all understood one another: shepherd understudy, ocean, me and did he go back to his fields and caves? yes, but they were gone strip-mining, lumber, defoliant, sterile streams: you knew that was coming weren’t we taught some starched sermon: the pasture awaits us elsewhere back up a moment: the forest you mentioned—remember, instead of a grove? untouched for the most part.   some human damage, but not ours we left no mark, not there in the midst of those great trees: not in the concentric rings that might have held us far past living instead, I put that man, like so many others, on paper— a tree already gone from sight where once it had drawn the eyes upward: the crest of a mountain.   crumpled thoughts, crumpled love shepherdboy, do you see the wild fennel bulbs I gathered for you olallieberries, new-mown grass, the tender fruits of   the coastal fig? I put them on paper, too, so fragile.   for nothing is ever going to last For Haines Eason