Andrea Pagliaro: At Seaforth Station

At Seaforth Station

The leaning quince branches wattled the white sky

While underfoot the deep brown mud, well daubed from dung,

Latticed with the shadows, enriched the air

With smells of earth wood and water.

Here long ago we would pick quinces by the hundred

Stepping into this cool damp solemnity from the glare outside:

A place where the thicket arched high in gothic grandeur.

To step outside again was to find a stage set

—White tree trunks and their branches

Gummed onto a blue green backdrop.

A line of old poplars approached it in perspective.

Stop at one and marvel at a cast iron piece embedded in the bark.

It was as a key in a door.

A wormhole through this scenery might show an older holier place

Where stone was made into implements—who knows how long ago.

Or take a complicated set of country turns

Three left then fifteen right past rocks shrubs and wild cherry

Perhaps the lost remains of a foundling gold settlement might show up.

Like history itself we would move from the simple to the intricate.

Yet with an older age is there a path to the simpler?

Andrea Pagliaro