by James Deahl

O taste and see that the Lord is good. –Psalm 34: 8

These feet that have carried me
over switchback trails in Appalachian darkness
I give up; they are left in tall grass
by the Baltimore and Ohio right of way
where steel rails cut close to the orange creek.

And these legs, so useful when climbing trees,
I relinquish to a boyhood now faded
to mere memory, perhaps belonging
to someone else who lived when I did,
climbed the very trees I now think I conquered.

I also cast off this intricate machinery
that gave me such ecstasy
and three miraculous daughters;
it floats mindlessly out to sea
where the currents are blue houses of desire.

My lungs I abandon to the early morning wind
that sung so well in them I thought
its music could never end;
an opera filling a concert hall
with a new day, with light.

And, yes, I even close forever these blue eyes
that just the other day watched astonished
while a plummeting hawk took a sparrow in mid-air
beside the frozen river
so quickly it seemed but a dream.

And in my dream I reluctantly
pass my hands to my children;
good hands, sturdy, comfortable
in their domesticity — kneading bread,
slicing garlic for the evening soup.

Arms, heart, that worn, battered spine;
I leave it all behind. Nothing but bones,
flesh, and the tired circulation of fluids;
things of this world. A sunrise, a sunset,
the longing in the heart to taste and see . . .

Like the Irish magus I too
pray for an old man’s frenzy,
though I would turn his word to fury
and seek the goodness in creation,
not its night.