Meadowsweet

It’s a fortunate experience
To find a poem before reading it,
Before knowing of its existence,

Experience like premonition
Or a mild form of time-traveling
That only reveals itself later

When you encounter the actual
Text of the poem that you’d never met
And recognize memory in it,

With a small start, Yes, I remember
An afternoon in ‘87
In the middle of a hazy June,

Taking the train back up to Oxford,
A summer student, American,
Who couldn’t recognize blackbird song

And wouldn’t remember the town’s name
Where we stopped for no one to get on
Once no one had stepped off. Just a pause,

And a minor breeze through the window,
And the surprising quiet of it,
The long grass tufting the platform’s edge.