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Book: Appreciating contemporary art
Vona Groarke: Vanishing Point
Great poems #1
Vanishing Point
Sometimes the van was the color of the field.
I was small then, barely eleven and every day
that summer taller, more sure of itself than I.
The silver grass of the lawn, uncut, used to wait
for the moon to pass, sitting out by the wall
to tilt up its face as if laughing, to shake out its long hair.
No one could say I lacked imagination: the ferns were
all the time wagging spindly, elderly fingers at me.
Once, a man caught my eye in the village:
his were not the color of the van or the field.
He said nothing to me and I hoarded it, that nothing,
hoard it still, nights the wind blows from the east
with its city talk aglitter like fine rain in headlights.
Sometimes I want to tell it this way but the want
to tell it just this way is only as strong
as the want to tell it every other way.
