An old mortality, These evening doorways into rooms, 
this door from the kitchen and there’s the yard 
the grass not cut and filled with sweetness 
and in the thorn the summer wounding the sun. 
And locked in the shade the dove calling down. 
The glare’s a little blinding still but only 
for the moment of surprise, like suddenly 
coming into a hall with a window at the end, 
the light stacked up like scaffolding. I am
that boy again my father told not to look 
at the ground so much looking at the ground. 
I am the animal touched on the forehead, charmed. 
In the sky the silver maple like rain in a cloud 
we’ve tied: and I see myself walking from what looks like 
a classroom, the floor waxed white, into my father’s 
arms, who lifts me, like a discovery, out of this life.

—Stanley Plumly