The Reliquary
One early morning long ago,
I stopped to watch the Avon flow.
Long-steeped and weedy, olive green,
Its waters slipped along below,
Slid over rocks, and in between—
Gelatinously smooth and slow,
High-hung by vine and leafy screen—
A fragrant, forested ravine.
The sun of that Midsummer day
Had yet to burn the mist away
That hovered on the glassy stream,
In one great swirling golden ray.
I watched the motes suspended gleam,
A shaft of Brownian display.
Bewitched, I watched that glowing beam
And tried to hold it like a dream.
Old willows, spreading mightily
Their overarching filigree
Of purest emerald and jade,
Held twilight in captivity.
The night air loitered in the shade,
Its clammy hands reached out for me.
Though strong, its chill began to fade,
Pierced by that single golden blade.
Time is a grim iconoclast.
Relentlessly, his dull years blast
Down column, pediment, and frieze,
The gilded temple of the past.
Before this vision fades or flees,
Perhaps these words will make it last,
So I may visit, when I please,
The river’s quiet harmonies,
With sunlight in the willow trees.
Patricia Rogers Crozier has been published in The Washington Post. She holds a B.S. in Physics from Mississippi College. She resides in Gulf Breeze, Florida and works at Publix. She is the winner of the 2024 SCP International Poetry Competition.
A really beautiful poem, with lush language and carefully controlled syntax (the latter necessary when all the lines end masculine).
At first I thought that this should have been divided into three eight-line stanzas, but then I realized that there were twenty-five lines, and I guessed that the poet had the wisdom NOT to excise one line (they are all lovely) just to fit a pattern.
The title is mysterious and suggestive. We normally think of a reliquary as a box or some other kind of container for precious things, such as a saint’s relics. But here I sense that the poet is thinking of all the overhang of nature (“high-hung,” “forested,” “suspended,” “overarching”) as a cover that conceals the speaker.