Two Campers In Cloud Country
(Rock Lake, Canada)
In this country there is neither measure nor
balance
To redress the dominance of rocks and woods,
The passage, say, of
these man-shaming clouds.
No gesture of yours or mine could catch their
attention,
No word make them carry water or fire the kindling
Like local
trolls in the spell of a superior being.
Well, one wearies of the Public
Gardens: one wants a vacation
Where trees and clouds and animals pay no
notice;
Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses.
It took three
days driving north to find a cloud
The polite skies over Boston couldn't
possibly accommodate.
Here on the last frontier of the big, brash
spirit
The horizons are too far off to be chummy as uncles;
The colors
assert themselves with a sort of vengeance.
Each day concludes in a huge
splurge of vermilions
And night arrives in one gigantic step.
It is
comfortable, for a change, to mean so little.
These rocks offer no purchase
to herbage or people:
They are conceiving a dynasty of perfect
cold.
In a month we'll wonder what plates and forks are for.
I lean to
you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.
The Pilgrims and Indians might
never have happened.
Planets pulse in the lake like bright amoebas;
The
pines blot our voices up in their lightest sighs.
Around our tent the old
simplicities sough
Sleepily as Lethe, trying to get in.
We'll wake
blank-brained as water in the dawn.
- Sylvia Plath