Going Back

When I was young there were primroses by a wood,
an untidy surprise in the dark of morning’s morning,
springing their freshness on a pocket-sized field.

Now I am part of the blankness of bed,
abstract, absent, cut away in my own global second . . .

Now in space, asteroid-atom, a mote
spinning in my own chamber, I note
a foreign body. Let a mind-bridge arc
the gigantic aeon of space, springing in dark
to link us two. I shall take you to where
a field unfindably lies. I shall share
a lightdark deepest tiniest spot of mind
where a five-year-old still turns to his own find.
Be with me here upon this April acre,
walk with me in the country I have lost,
this shadow light, this grass, the guardian wood,
an exotically tumbling patch of flowers.