We do not grow the basis of our wealth by faith alone.
         We enter what's inside, hoping there to find
days like cairns in ordered rows that somehow,
         out of grace, mark a path towards a lifted curse
but the rot of either-or will find the core:
         once, a boy, your flailing arms flung into a giggle,
you mined the branches of an apple tree
         your father's house looked down upon,
and the sun — the hard, taut push of it —
         where you stood, it touched your hand:
and the moment — the sweet, strong juice of it,
         when you at last bit down — smelled bad.
For all the happy accidents, the climate of our youth
         isn’t home; even the hardest of memory’s iron,
the treasures of its dank and teeming groves,
         the fields full of blooming, mating grain
and happiness, ripe to stifle the sighs of years
         long hence: all will rust like a man who,
hot with effort, worn by a day's hard traveling
         scans dark woods. Flares of houses hide among
the hills. The wanderer takes off his heavy coat
         and feels the wind’s knife lightly touch his throat.