Oh, red rose, we’re
in such trouble.

Thinking I’d better head toward heaven,
I walked till I came to a main road.

A little angel stepped out of a scrub oak
and tried to bar my way—

but no, I won’t be kept out—
I’m from there, I said—that’s my home.

Over the angel’s head, I shouted,
Master, tender cast your light

on my dusty shins. Let me in,
ticketless prodigal, alive

to a kindness that never ends.

 

————-—after Mahler’s “Urlicht”

 

 

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Patrick Donnelly is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Willow Hammer (Four Way). Former poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, he is program director of the Frost Place, a center for poetry and the arts at Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, New Hampshire.

 

 

 

Photo by Farah Almazouni on Unsplash