Time of Longing in Tivoli

     A baron bought acres by the river 
     for an ideal city, naming it, O lovingly, 
     his utopia, Tivoli, 
     and plowing Friendship and Flora Streets
     before going belly up, broke, bankrupt.
     I long for my own ideal house on a hill 
     above a wide river and myself--see?--
     at the wide window watching eagles 
     on the ice bearing rushes for nests.
     I know the ice will crack, broken by a coast
     guard cutter, and the eggs will crack 
     and the eaglets die or fly 
     away, and I will detach this beaky longing 
     from its socket and break as, melancholy, joyful, 
     the dream is overlaid by its rushing reality--home.  
     Or homeless.


     Celia Bland
 	
     

     *         *          *
       

     about the poem:

     "It's all true--the baron's utopia, the eagles nesting on the 
     ice, and the beaky longing circling the white house.  Rereading 
     this poem, I'm reminded of a poem I wrote in Central Park one 
     cold fall day, fifteen years ago.  I imagined having a daughter-- 
     'she will give me a home.'  The poem was called 'Homeless' and 
     began (rather than ended, as this one does), with an apparent 
     contradiction: 'I have a child./ She is my mother.'  This poem 
     is a return to the same longing for sanctuary, after the home 
     is established, the children born, the windows hung with curtains.  
     Perhaps, the poem is most in sympathy with Lorca's lines: 'How far, 
     when I am with you!/How near, when you depart!'"



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