In Itself, A Long Time Ago, But Which We Did Not Notice Poem by RIC BASTASA

at the earliest hour of the morning
this first day of January, i hear a faint cry from the
valley, outside this old house, seemingly like a
cry from my imagination,
my mind listening to the sound
of its making

i knew i heard it, it was like
a shrill voice of a little girl,
or was it a parrot, or the vine,
or from the distant wind,


sunlight lands in my skin from its distant flight
no longer a soft shade, or a leaning shadow, a little shallow
it is outside my flesh, this body

it does not come from this daily monologue
of a memory fading with the passage of time
the sun emerges from the hills and mountains
and walls and fences, and boundaries, and markings
outside my body

that faint cry - it has a personal note of its own
like a blow of a horn, it comes from the sun's majesty

surrounded by the laces of its own
magnificent roundness, yet still far away from me
a trillion miles, a number of light years

it is like a fresh awareness, a new way of looking at things, of what
was there a long time ago.