“Let the bucket of memory down into the well…”
William Stafford
I remember a time, not so long ago,
when the well of my life seemed fathomless,
when my bucket was not already so full
of aging dreams and aching bones.
Still, it does not seem time to set the bucket aside,
and so I send it down–
I pull up Monet’s lilies; they are bending
around curved walls, and I think,
how I long to see those delicate blossoms for myself!
but L’Orangerie is so far, and I am old now,
and insidious fear sets in
and paralyzes feathery hope,
but
I must try again, I think;
this time I pull up
lilies of the valley, their delicate ivory bells
nodding and bowing on green slender stems;
they are summoning the hours
and they promise spring and, yes, resurrection,
but strange snows have covered any semblance of rebirth,
and besides, dreams come and go, and the only
lilies of the valley I ever knew disappeared years ago,
plowed under,
returned to earth, which, I suppose,
is something of a foreshadowing,
something perhaps of a resurrection.
One more time, I think, as I send the bucket down again,
and this time pull up out of that water,
dark and cool and mysterious–
yet unexpectedly familiar–
a hyacinth of ultramarine blue and an angel, iridescent
like Gabriel’s wings in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation—
Such Unknowing!
Until I turn, and, gazing into the water,
as if in some quantum moment, see
the I am of it all–
