quince tree

by louise gluck from the seven ages

we had, in the end, only the weather for a subject.

luckily, we lived in a world with seasons --

we felt, still, access to variety:

darkness, euphoria, various kinds of waiting.

i suppose, in the true sense, our exchanges

couldn’t be called conversation, being

dominated by accord, by repetition.

and yet it would be wrong to imagine

we had neither sense of one another nor

deep response to the world, as it would be wrong to believe

our lives were narrow, or empty.

we had great wealth.

we had, in fact, everything we could see

and while it is true we could see

neither great distance nor fine detail,

what we were able to discern we grasped

with a hunger the young can barely conceive,

as though all experience had been channeled into

these few perceptions.

channeled without memory.

because the past was lost to us as referent,

lost as image, as narrative. what had it contained?

was there love? had there been, once,

sustained labor? or fame, had there ever been

something like that?

in the end, we didn’t need to ask. because

we felt the past; it was, somehow,

in these things, the front lawn and back lawn,

suffusing them, giving the little quince tree

a weight and meaning almost beyond enduring.

utterly lost and yet strangely alive, the whole of our human existence ---

it would be wrong to think

because we never left the yard

that what we felt there was somehow shrunken or partial.

in its grandeur and splendor, the world

was finally present.

and it was always this we discussed or alluded to

when we were moved to speak.

the weather. the quince tree.

you, in your innocence, what do you know of this world?