Song With Bells by Joseph Langland

Once in childhood’s rainwater wells

Sunday sounded

Sky-clear, sun-bright, rounded

As fabulous piping in fluted sea shells

Over long green hills of ocean swells.

Day was a sinewy flowing,

Brass glowing

Through bing-shaped, bang and bong bells.

Somehow insistent beating of bells

Trembles our history, crying

Epiphanies danced into dying.

We assume what tone tells.

If grief grins or laughter knells

For children skipping and calling

Toward ancient teardrops falling,

Weep and laugh also. Love is a lonely

Somehow insistent beating of bells.

Fluted in sea shells

Love equally tells

Dead-man blues and bridegroom bells.

From “Selected Poems” by Joseph Langland

(University of Massachusetts: $18.95; 109 pp.). 1991 by Joseph Langland. Reprinted by permission.