Present

I want to give you this:
Fields the grain and russet of corduroy,
zipped up by iron train rails
and seamed by this highway stitching
to the horizon--to hills
the coal-colored absence of sky,
pines pinking clouds.

What I had not seen for years, I show you:
Late afternoon rain, the sky inverted--
clouds puddled in valleys, moon risen early,
awaiting night.  The curl of a fern
around black spore packets
spotting its back, a spate of freckles.
Hay twined in Christmas bundles and cracker barrels.

You showed me nothing visible, yet
I regained my sight: the clarity
of a leaf and certainty of a tree.

by Kelly Vaughan
August 1998

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Original Poems by Kelly Vaughan