On a road through the mountains with a friend
many years ago
I came to a curve on a slope where a clear
stream
flowed down flashing across dark rocks through its
own
echoes that could neither be caught nor
forgotten
it was the turning of autumn and already
the mornings were cold with ragged clouds
in the hollows
long after sunrise but the pasture sagging like a
roof
the gla**y water and flickering yellow leaves
in the few poplars and knotted plum trees were
held up
in a handful of sunlight that made the slates
on the silent
mill by the stream glisten white above their ruin
and a few relics of the life before had been
arranged
in front of the open mill house to wait
pale in the daylight out on the open
mountain
after whatever they had been made for was over
the dew was drying on them and there were
few who took that road
who might buy one of them and take it away
somewhere
to be unusual to be the only one
to become unknown a wooden bed stood there on
rocks
a cradle the color of dust a cracked oil jar iron
pots
wooden wheels iron wheels stone wheels the tall
box of a clock
and among them a ring of white stone the
size of an
embrace set into another of the same size
an iron spike rising from the ring where the
wooden
handle had fitted that turned it in its days as a
hand mill
you could see if you looked closely that the
top ring
that turned in the other had been carved long
before in the form
of a fox lying nose in tail seeming to be
asleep the features worn almost away where it
had gone around and around grinding grain
and salt
to go into the dark and to go on and remember