Et In Arcadia Ego \ One First Morning

Alan: I wrote this in memory of my uncle, Bud Butterworth, and of the many summers spent at our families’ New Hampshire lakeside camp.

Et In Arcadia Ego

After Uncle died

I felt sure I’d see him

back at the summer place

sawing up stovewood.

He always eluded me.

Still, years on,

I expect him around a corner

humming his curious baggy tunes,

a free spirit in the pine-woods.

When, nearing the end of life,

he hobbled one last time up the hill

to his old abandoned haunts –

the hut in ruins, the clearing overgrown –

did Ryokan find Ryokan

puttering among the weeds?

Nancy: I’d name the bird “knee deep” except one of the frogs already has that name!

One First Morning

If this were the first morning

if I were the first woman

if the birds had just been made

I would name them all

I would give them their proper songs

I would set one on the birch

and one under the rose bush

and the hares would come up to me

and I would name grass, and clover

and then as the sun rose

I would call the water

the schools of fish, the copepods

the seals, and birds with long legs

to walk out into the rising water

toward the fish.

Before the dew burns off in the sun

I will have it all in place,

although I have not found a song

for the long-legged fishing birds.