On Coming into Possession of a Diary

On Coming into Possession of a Diary

            a metastasizing sonnet

The giant cast no shadow as he walked.

Which made the things and people that he loved

                                                love him back,

knowing that he could hurt them and would not.

No dubious darkness such as trailed their lives,

cross-hatching each bright gesture with its own

                                                undoing,                           

trailed his. What he did, he did entire:                              

Dug wild leeks and coaxed from stone a garden,

drank beer from a sweating glass in sunset-

                                                purpled air,

built a trim shed, fought enemies, kept friends.

Solid in life and solider in death,

he feared no discovery and so he was

                                                discovered,

sealed in secrecy even from himself.

But where will revelation make a home

when orphans charged with its keeping have learned

                                                to live outdoors?

The one sewn into his long shucked shadow.

The other tending his elected sun....