Bertha Rogers: What Want Brings

Gray rain seeps through the fall
of played-out clouds, loops among hills, 
ragged mountains; flexes and thins 


cut, contoured  fields. This here—  
nearly parallel to another September 
when I, after tramping aged ley lines, 


leaned into standing stones that 
gently mocked my bent. O! I was in love 
with hardness, rocks tilting over 


landscape’s green edge, words riven 
with meaning! I thought (mindless I) 
that I still owned some forever, 


and so walked right into those stones, 
touched their weighted flanks, shifted 
their quiet as if they were my true 


grandfathers, good old men who 
had only my best in their storied senses; 
showed in gray and grizzled faces 


deep listening. I wasn’t the first, last—
how many others waited there; forgot 
what they were given until, 


in some gray-green season those moments, 
like gouged-out uplands, 
reach, returned—haggard and lonely gift?

Copyright 2020 Bertha Rogers