I wanted to write a response to the masterpiece by Yeats, “The Wild Swans at Coole.” Nonetheless, my style owes more to Gerard Manley Hopkins. This is one of my best poems.
*
Dedicated to William Butler Yeats
And
For Alla Gallagher
*
My fourth retreat is a nest of old memories.
I search for my joy in all of the places I explored here before:
A clovering path past butterfly flicker
In the Indian grass.
The tree cavern glowing green
From the heart of the wood.
A serenely sloping meadow
On which to contemplate the lake.
At first, I stood there waiting so expectedly
For nonexistent swans.
*
But joy was in the discovery.
Knowing, I sense it ebb away.
*
Listen to the aire in the air where you belong.
Perhaps, it is a song of your longing to leave.
The lake like liquid light,
I sit in the shade, watching, then singing
To the shade of myself as I was.
Surely, by doing this, I am turning into the swan
I waited for in vain.
Soon, blessedly, I shall sail
The luminous, numinous
Waters of peace.
*
Steven Golden
Franciscan Retreat Center,
Prior Lake, MN
2017
stevengoldenpoetry 