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ForsythiaAt the Hill School guest house in Pottstown, Pa.

By Gerald SternPosted Thursday, Aug. 6, 1998, at 3:30 AM ET

By Gerald Stern

(posted Wednesday, Aug. 5, 1998)

To hear the poet read "Forsythia," click here.

At seven o'clock in the morning the only reading
was a condensation of an African novel
in which an Englishwoman's faith is tested
in the rage after Lumumba's assassination;
and the only wallpaper was a bluish print of
branches and blossoms in a latticed arrangement,
giving a kind of deadly peace to the wall
and--well--a chaotic collection of dried flowers
framed and mirrored and glassed, with a piece of birch bark
in the lower right-hand corner with this message:
For Old Times' Sake, written across the lenticels.

But I was determined to watch a small bird and study
the root system of a scraggly walnut
and reach out from the second story to pick
a magnolia bud and put it in my mouth
like a Chesterfield or a Marsh Wheeling and feel
the juices run down my chin and take something,
a miniature hurricane lamp, a bar of soap,
back to my car and on the way confront
my first yellow bush since it was seventy degrees
and winter was gone and see what I would do
with the orange mud and the green branches this time.