Firstness

Richard Tillinghast

Early pleasures please best, some old voice whispers:
Cozy holdings, the heart's iambic thud
And sly wanderings—lip-touchings, long summers,
The rain's pourings and pipings heard from bed,
Earth-smell of old houses, airy ceilings,
A boy's brainy and indolent imaginings.

Twenty summers gone then that boy is gone,
Speeding down beach roads in a friend's MG.
Love, or the limey buzz of a g & t—
Or better, both—and the watery hunter's moon,
Accelerate the engines of the night,
And set a long chase afoot.

Today twenty years older than that even,
I breathe quietness and fresh-laundered linen,
Kneeling, seeing with eyes opened white brick,
Smelling Sunday, mumbling beside my son those words
About a lost sheep, and someone's having erred.
Thank God for instinct, and beginner's luck.