You who have yet to learn
To lean on me, endure
A darker night than any before,
Or by candle light
Let me beckon you farther.
No ghostly haunts, no hesitation
No spilled flutes
Of imagined celebrations
Of published works
Stains my open hand.
Grand it is that you do not know
When you are least steady.
I will silently support
More than you
Have yet to imagine.
If it is a bright day
I will pardon your absence
Without that glance
That calls you back
To do your bidding.
If it is raining
I may be so young
To not swell and deny
You the glow
Of an unsheathed nib.
And in the snow
That must always fall
Erasing all words and punctuation,
Come to me,
I will be your plantation.
Jim Lowell is a winter mainlander and summer Cuttyhunk poet whose works have appeared in The Canadian Review of Literature, English, The Caribbean Writer and elsewhere.
