Wimbledon
Walking on the common
in heavy blue light,
she says to him the time for children,
were there ever one, has
passed, that would be that, and
two close calls aside,
she proves to be right, and the years
pass with happiness
too great to be measured, because
one does not measure what feels
endless, just as this land was once
a queen's private hunting estate,
everything around it Hers too;
there were no boundaries,
until a village grew to service
Her horses and
part-time tailors, the cobblers and
surgeons and cooks needed
to properly entertain guests, and
then the uninvited came,
took what was not desirable, built
their limestone houses,
rolled carriages down two-track
paths until the dirt was stone,
watching the eternal from their
handblown windows
as it tilted through centuries, like
a faithful planet
that doesn't regard its reflection
bouncing off distant moons,
light traveling back so slowly the
world has moved on, its orbit
endless, drawn by forces
exerting their will in the darkness,
which on this falling January night
has drawn the sky close
like a wool coat, the lights in
homes once run by servants
flickering without a wince of post-
imperial shame,
and South London looks up
at wisdom winging down
at them like a bat flying on sonar:
how nothing remains, that in
mere years, their love, with no one
but each other as witness,
will have found some other way
to mark time, not by being
boundless, but bound, as the sky
is to ground at the close of day.
John Freeman
Maps
Copper Canyon Press
Copyright © 2017 by John Freeman
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission