UNDER THE POPLAR TREE

Standing in a rose garden
under a poplar tree
asking no pardon to disclose
another's popularity

We are alone under a sky
seen by perhaps only one star
often wondering in the frost
the cost of beauty from afar

But our eyes are stone cast
on two lonely birds
who sing us their solo tune
in a song without words

Putting bread from the feeder
and water for their thirst
soon they will fly ahead
satisfied from the first,

Few bother to stand with me
under this dream of landscape
or understand that poetry
has its own green band of escape

Here we take a surprised leaf
of orange, lemon and red
by our own relief
is already gone on this river bed

Asking to be born
for another century
as we walk
along haltingly,

Perhaps only Keats,Byron
Yeats, Dickinson or Shelley
will greet such an October sun
and still run away with me.