What Way

At the table, at the grave not knowing whether to grieve or celebrate, they seemed to find a way within the stalled noon clatter and the dusk over oily swamps and elder tangle along a locked stockade of heavy machines, as the blue heron, looking down, flew farther on. Nothing dissolved for them the mortal green and black in transparent power of spacious streams now gone from earth. The flickering they found, terror-hope-terror, in fire of sunset clouds remained unwavering in its progress to night and day and night. And yet the pleasure they took in everything did not wear out. The limestone quarry of a poorer century, lipped in birds and berries, treasured up, still treasures up, old rains beneath its surface of dusty jet— still waits behind their houses on airless nights to be the dreams and drownings of new children.