Rose Hill

Riding the dragonfly I have come
hunting at the edge of history
for the bobbing summer boy
in the apple tide
I am the interloper
with dark sayings in my quiver

let every stone be overturned, he
is not here, affix the seal
it is a graveyard wound
lost in the long sorrows of the tall
grasses:
a mantis prays, the cat-tails nod
small hands cup the lifeless wren

my arrows fly into the lovelorn grave
with no more sound then the wind on wave

nights I hear him walking on the water
whose depth he will never know

Glen Woodard
May 1986
Revised October 1993