Page 7 - Contrast1971Spring

Thoughts on Receiving a Love Poem from a Student

Suspecting my tendencies and

Tender to his client .

The snow served her well as

Sentinel to my thoughts.

Left alone, minds fasten

To lines leading from the house

Away from town on

Scatter roads

Too soon

Too often

But each flake turned back inside

Truant notions focused not on her

Forcing the issue

Limiting the options

Demanding I give her consideration

Driving me assertively

It took as its model

Her message for me.

Were phrases had fit nicely

Into the architecture of my carapace

The windows were now dappled

With challenging new formulas

Savagely demanding the year be ridden

Differently.

As sire to the poem

I must be concerned

With 'its further education

But scholarship has not prepared

Me for her amethyst mountains

Nor schooled me in the resistance to snow.

Research has many forms.

Holding to this for now

One day I may remember

With only tempered sadness

My near surrender

To buttercups and

Frozen rain .

••

Max Dixon