VISITING STONEHENGE, 1958


When we came first it was
old stones
standing in corn.
You reached it by a dusty, rutted track
and the wide white and golden downs
were born aloft by sky and skylark song.
We picnicked with our Thermos in the wild grass
on outspread rugs, devouring sandwiches my mother made,
lay back and watched the forming and reforming clouds,
the cricket's prance, the fleeting flight of butterflies and bees.
When we came first it was
old stones,
mute, mysterious, from somewhere lost in time,
untold by science. You could run your fingertips
along each deep striation, feel the sun's warmth,
the shadow's coolness, sense
our planet's poise, its massive substance
grabbed and grappled with
by our hands.