The Equivalent by Paul John Roach

The equivalent of the wood in my head

Is the wood on the hillside;

The equivalent of the long ride, the green lane, the winding path,

Is the dream that alerts us to the unimagined.

The darkness beneath ferns

Or under riverbanks

Is like a closed shop of goods

Awaiting the progress of mice.

The light on beech leaf and oak

Illuminates and illustrates tales

Of far off places and far away times.

Steps across a floor,

The smell of damp wooden frames,

Crusted panes

And empty seed boxes,

All these

Are recalled somehow

In the crisp, hardened snow

That wraps around aspens

Above a silent meadow.

Equivalence.

Are they watching,

Those who we purport

To have the gift of knowing:

The wise, the mad,

The beyond, the within?

The equivalent of what is passing by

Is a mother’s lost lullaby.