One more poem from the book, the title poem,
called "Permission to Speak."
The poem was written from a memory of a spring snowstorm
after flowers had already come out, leaves
on the trees in New England.
It had been a spring storm, and it's
very confusing for a while.
And it triggered off an earlier memory of something--
a kind of a deja vu experience.
"Permission to Speak."
"Mornings from my upstairs window
I can see a gray stand of birch and further down
a hickory grove, then the river that powers the mill that
grinds flour.
Later, I'll eat the bread.
Last night a spring snow blurred the countryside,
and for a while I lost my way.
I thought I saw a boy in a crimson bathing suit whirl
downstream on an inner tube.
So I closed my eyes on the old words for birch and hickory
and snow like a novice in his cell
discovering light, not the One, but another about which
he'll remain silent all his life.
I came to myself at the window.
That boy, already seen in memory,
gives me permission to speak.
After a spring snow a father and son
took a sleigh ride along the riverbank,
and what the son couldn't see--
the particular hills and trees lost to whiteness--
made him cry.
The father snapped the reins and pointed
at what must have been a red fox sliding past a birch--
'Look at that fellow in the red nightgown!'
From which the son will date his love of the world,
traveling swiftly past."