Down through Many Levels


by Pavel Chichikov

So many mowers – sounds of engine rooms –

Though motorless the air-borne insects

Scatter among larkspur in the garden

Green larkspur, not full-grown now

With buds of yellow buttons on the tops –

Feathery pagoda towers above buttercups

Grass mown down, weeds mown down

But not too far away green silent water flows

Between a high bank and a low one

There of straight-spined tulip poplars

Tulip-figured blossoms fall

Green cups and crimson-yellow hearts

The stream in glass reflection

Fills the moving sky from side to side

Without a sound, heavy, frictionless

Beside the low-banked stream a seated one,

Straight-backed as the trees – absorbed

By water passing, spread in coarse reflection

Then, said the moving river, is it only You

Is it only You I show the sky

And touch with tulip blossoms?

Down through many levels, down

I wander among larkspur in a garden

And no one sees except the ones who look

But here is where I rest, but here

Is where I watch the wide sky overhead

Reflected in the narrow moving river

Visit Pavel's website at Grey Owl Press.

Subscribe to CE
(It's free)

Go to Catholic Exchange homepage

MENU