Reclimbing Fern Hill (I See Floodwaters Rising)

Then for now

Or now for then

To be green and golden

Or gray and olden

Time knows no mercy

But restores the world
To the same old pleasures

Via the same old

Circular means

All that’s to come

Has been foreshadowed

In the light of all

That has ever been

So we dance on and on
Holding hands unbroken

Change is an illusion

And so too are the chains

That won't keep the seas

From rising again

* * * * *

The immediate prompt for this poem was the image (reproduced below) that my friend Christy Rupp  posted to Facebook.   Simple but harrowing.  It shows that Photoshop is not only capable of distorting an image but (in the right hands) is also capable of restoring us to a fuller sense of its original meaning. 

Christy's reworking of the Orwell cover in turn inspired me to revisit Fern Hill - in greener days, one of my favorite poems.    The more things change, the more they stay the same, but also the more our understanding has a chance to ripen and deepen; with any luck, eventually we become attuned to the rhythm and patterns of of time's circularity.  Perhaps if we re-climb Fern Hill enough times the chains of our purely linear perspective will fall away altogether!   Free at last, free at last - too bad all we see are the floodwaters rising ...

  

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