The Ends of the Earth

The wind shears through hardwoods,
then rain brings down the leaves

here, eight thousand miles east of
their archipelago of service,
maplike now in its remoteness.

Woodsmoke censes the air in the hermitage
they have made for themselves.
A tin roof snugs it in.

And is that a cricket singing?

The moorings of a life
tighten, creak and hold.
Hearth fires burning the dead growth of the forest
enact a sacrament.

A church bell back there
resonates over emerald rice fields,
waterfalls and terraced mountainsides
and the boars’-teeth-necklaced tribesmen
they lived among:

pipe-smoking heads of families and their wives,
brown-footed sons who herd the pigs,
pointy-breasted daughters.

Drawn by the Sunday bell
into a sanctuary of tiled coolness,
they look up into rafters
where birds of astonishing colors
sing and raise their young.

—Richard Tillinghast