note to a friend

Where you stand the trees appear
to have been thinking of philosophy.
Winter trees now almost trembling
on the verge of a new conception.
Collegiate elms branch like nerves
touched by your foreign smile.

Where you stand the snow appears
to be waking up from mumbled dreams.
That snow has fallen deep around you,
and now awake it whispers astonishment.

Look how these natural forms have gained significance!
Even the wise stones of architecture have become naive.
Oh...your presence standing there has brought a mood
to the old atmosphere of scholars -- a new kind of genius!
Old lands trickle culture and beauty through your eyes.
Passersby wonder why they suddenly feel different.

Substances are gaining intensity,
and a moment of time is turning
into what it really wants to be.

This photograph almost brings you to me.
I could shake your hand and say "Hello!"
But then I would suffer the aftershocks
of encounter with a vital living poem.

I am really struggling for words here.
All I want to do is capture something
about the way you change the space,
where tree and snow and stone become
somehow stunned to have you standing.

It's very unusual how you affect the atmosphere.
The very atoms of space around you are tingling.

You are so young, my friend. So much life
waits and so many scenes becoming poems --
stanzas of time to hold your faery presence.

Only a sonnet unwritten by Shakespeare
could express how you enhance this world.


Copyright 2011 -- Tim Buck