Let Him Remember

Let Him Remember Sydney Lea (bio) But if a man live many years and rejoice in them all; yet let him remember the days of darkness; for they shall be many. Ecclesiastes 11:8 (KJV) Out alone in a quarrelsome wind,he watches two clouds that accept it,two noisy ravens that struggle against it,gathering five feet, losing three.All could blow away in an eyeblink. The ravens are trading one callfrom among their many: gawp, gawp.To his left, he imagines a dusky form.He doesn't look there. He looks at the sky.One bird dives into a pine and disappears. The other fights on.The man has arrived at a point in his lifewhen some inklings, however vague,rekindle vivid scenes,in his case mostly from boyhood. He has no idea what seizes him here,what summons his uncle's farm,not yet besiegedby tanning parlor, deli, chain store.It may be a scent on the wind, though its burden back then was all straw and mire.Beef steers stood rump-to in a field,tails blown between hind legs,steaming nostrils ringed by ice.He recalls the cattle's occasional moans. [End Page 334] He felt, untimely, that night was falling,as he does just now, though it's noon,and that the cold could blow right through him.If the boy didn't think in metaphors yet,still he sensed something dark in the world– darker still than those ravens. [End Page 335] Sydney Lea Sydney Lea is a former Pulitzer finalist and winner of the Poets' Prize. He was Vermont's Poet Laureate from 2011 to 2015 and is the author of twenty-three books: a novel, five volumes of personal and three of critical essays, and fourteen poetry collections, most recently Here (Four Way Books, NYC, 2019). His fifteenth collection, What Shines?, will be published in February. Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press