As I walked by the river, I saw life ready itself for autumn. Plants hanging heavy with seeds preparing their last acts of life. I came across a man turning his pockets out, and rummaging around. I asked if he’d lost something.
This is what he said.
“What discretion lies in the downcast eyes in the stand of the Houndstongue.
How the moon and the wind and the people of the riverbend trust unto her what we will never know.
Under what hoods so small are secrets stored however fateful, frivolous, inspired or bored.
Whispered or sung on the Snail’s trace, or in the gossip of the Aster washing her face.
And oh what burden bears heavy our Hounds tongue’s head and swells her lungs to burs.
She droops and sways as if to say that secrets can no longer stay.
‘Anyone please’, she cries, ‘come near’ to find relief from the faintest brush
and sticks herself to those that come close in places they’ll never look.
If you find one, I hear, you’ll have every secret whispered that year.
Although I’ve tried to no avail,
I’ve planted and watered, watched and waited,
and instead of secrets
I reap solely their keeper.”
The man reached toward me and from my shirt, pulled a tiny bur.
“This one’s for you, now do what you will”
And with that he turned and walked away.
The sun reached the mountain’s peak, as he stepped now out of sight.
And at this time it must have been fated, that a trading of tongues took place at dusk
That little bur gripped to my palm and pulled itself right in
for from my lips poured poetry of everything that’s kept from me.
It was in a voice, though, scarcely mine, that I heard her lively speak.
In a language I have never heard, though I understood every word.
While I recall all that was said in the time of that setting sun.
It would not do, until violets bloom red, to utter it ever again.
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