The Most Important Things
When Stand By Me ruled my world,
when everyone else thought the first line was,
"The first time I saw a dead human being..."
I knew different.
I knew the first one hundred and forty-four words.
I knew that the story was about how
"the most important things are the hardest to say."
I knew it.
All poets know it.
Most fiction writers do,
at least if they're good.
We all know--
twisting words around a silent deer,
cropping grass along the track,
will never really say
what secrets were in those deep eyes.
But we know there are secrets.
We know there are truths.
We know the eyes will always watch us,
gazing at our movements
with unknowable thoughts.
And what are the secrets?
What does my deer whisper?
Does it know about the deep, narrow waterfall
that throws itself forward like a cliff diver,
plunging to the river below?
Does it know that that there is a rock,
hidden on the far side, on the narrow path,
where you can see the whole cascade?
Does it know that the image of it comes to me
when I ask "Who am I and why am I here?"
Does it know about the way
the weak New England sun makes autumn golden,
casting auras around the Goddard steeple?
Does it understand about the cool marble staircase
and the lions that guard it?
Does it know that I once sat in a graveyard,
talking to ancestors I never met, just to catch them up on things?
(It was a rural boneyard;
there was no one there to see me, of course.)
Does it know that, when I hear the opening chords,
and see Richard playing Gordie playing Stephen,
that I remember my teen years
with a kind of aching,
cheated glow?
It may know these things,
but it can express them no more than I can,
not really.
Because the most important things...
well, you know.