Bald Hill - poem

Bald Hill                                                                      

I speak two languages, that never
Leave my tongue, they fall
Like loose shale, about Bald Hill
What will you be, small flesh?
So much seems over already.
A part, immeasurably old, yearns
To be molded in predestination, but is stuck.

What can I tell you, this half
Of me, when two of my languages
Are unformed -- the steepness of
The hill forbids the telling
The distance between the crest and
The marsh, the deer and the wood, the
Hawk and the high grassy meadow
Are immeasurable.  We stumble in telling.

When I brought you up the hill
I wove a reed mat
That I unstrung coming down
We strung it together, indifferent
But it was really paramount, not
Penultimate, the slipping
Of nativity not measured
In notches of the rotting pine posts
Set up to delineate a farmer's
Forgotten field.  It is over,
The Hill was a ziggurat
My babble of tongues

Eric Maroney  11-04