A Roadside Near Ithaca

Here we picked wild strawberries, though in my memory we're neither here nor missing.

Or I'd scuff out by myself at dusk, proud to be lonely.

Now everything's in bloom along the road at once: tansy mustard, sow thistle, fescue, burdock, soapwort, the mailbox-high day lilies, splurges of chicory with thin, ragged, sky-blue flowers.

Or they're one blue the sky can be, and always, not varium et mutabile semper, restless forever.

In memory, though memory eats its banks like any river, you can carry by constant revision some loved thing: a stalk of mullein shaped like a what's-the-word-for a tower of terraced bells, that's it, a carillon!

A carillon ringing its mute changes of pollen into a past we must be about to enter, the road's so stained by the yellow light (same yellow as the tiny mullein flowers) we shared when we were imminent.