—with a line from James Merrill
Like children who have found the world is good,
we slip into the shadows of the wood
and follow doe-tracks downhill to the stream,
then with the pressure of the current cold
against our knees, we cross from dream to dream,
pluck golden fruit of which we have been told,
and sing the songs of childhood—stray deep
in an enchanted forest, where lifted by wind,
the hardened branches over us rise and descend:
the heaving muscles of a beast asleep.