Song for a Seeker
by Rebecca Henry Lowndes
This is a memory: how,
when I'd left off seeking,
eschewed involvement,
disparaged adventure,
one
wet
unheralded Friday I
descried intact a trove,
a lode untapped,
of mettlesome rare cut,
who
bestowed on me a random
smile,
a guileless gift of
candy and the
thoughtless stray remark
that set upon my cheek
a veil;
then,
as though a slackened
string somewhere went snap,
pulled taut and singing,
one
hot
and wary look we shared,
for here it was, the fretted Grail
no toll could ransom out of
time:
a tandem soul.
How glad I'd been, that year, to be
alone!
But now his soft indulgent
eyes, his measured words
me everywhere did stalk,
and brought me down:
the proud and seasoned hunter
snared, undone!
(Sweet consternation)
How, pale in my deep
green robe, I flew the stairs
to let him in a stranger,
nearly one
unnerved, heart-plundered so,
as to declare me fetching!
And how, within my sunny
garret, kindle-snug and
shrine-remote, we talked,
refined this mined, this treasured
pairing
carefully,
for he was bound away from me
and, clouded with regret, described
his years bereft, his hewn disguise,
the loveless trap;
the haughty wife who thissed and thatted
coldly and without regard
'til all was ruin: a marriage
cleft
and in my lap.
How, after days, and days
again, again
we talked (though ever less)
aloud),
and in our stretching
toward a center,
scarcely touching,
tucked and stitched the raveled
edges of our lives
together.
I'd never trusted the idea
of being loved before the chase,
before the searing trek across
self-immolation land;
but in this memory of how
the love I'd sought to raise
found me
ere I had even thrilling
caught
the taste of ore at hand:
herein lies the becoming of
my life, my history.
c. 1987, by Rebecca Henry Lowndes
