I forgive myself
for being ineffective and unsure.
And I forgive the day
for being imperfect—
the noise of the cutters of long
and lovely grass on the hillside below,
probably gutting daffodils
in the process, the heartening yellow
of hope not spared either
in the indifferent clearing going on.
The unease lurking in the margins
of it all reminds me
of a long, shadowed portal
sliced into sharp diagonals
by unpropitious interpolations of light.
I forgive the shadows
wherever they fall, the chill
of the long covered walkway
in my heart now, headed backwards,
some winter cloister with no roses
and no limestone saints,
perhaps the one way up beyond Harlem
and a battlement bootless now,
won in those hours on the bus
I rode only one time, unhesitating,
to that place in turn called
Chquaesgeck, Lange Bergh, Fort Tryon,
between rivers, on a ridge high above
the city I had borrowed for a day or two,
as was my wont, in snow and wind
and no thought the whole while
of any imperfection in myself, that day.
image: Cloister, Hans, Pixabay
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