The days follow
each other. We
rise and drink
our tea, we eat
our bread. We
walk and we walk
and though we don’t
stop, the journey
changes. We are
like the river,
pulled along.
No. We are
the perfume
of wild roses—
though the flowers
bloom behind a fence,
their sweetness braids
into the breeze
with a beauty
so ungraspable
even sunlight can’t touch it
and darkness can’t find it,
and mygod, it’s sweet,
incomprehensibly sweet.
I love where the poem takes it’s turn, it’s narrator’s reorientation,
“We are
like the river,
pulled along.
No. We are
the perfume
of wild roses—…
The correction or revision seems so genuine, and then the poem leans that new way so fully it takes the reader along. I’m NOT saying the first half is less effective, but that it contrasts so much with the last half, I think it sets it up quite well.