We watched the tired sun go down
Grey night strikes across the sky
Where melted the golden butter sun
Just now beyond the forest green rim
Of hills they crouch—
The light beams of departed day
Stillness wrapped around me close
a silent flame
and consumed me heeding not my cry
of loneliness
And ever more far away its echo
at last became
a part of that wavering fire of my
own quietness
Chilling, wailful
Screaming
Railroad distress
Call—
Its fateful rhythm
The fused, muted sounds
Of the valley drifted
Up to the top of the hill.
Jessie
The icy, cold
Of the little hill streams,
Sparkling over sometimes
Sharp-edged,
Sometimes rounded rocks
Jessie
The unbelievably sweet laughter
Interrupted calls of the voices
From far across the river.
Jessie
Pure, warm, sunshine
Days—lying on the pebbly beach
Listening to the haunting call
Of the ghost-like, toy-like
Trains whistling mournfully
Of their endless pursuits
Jessie
A shadow falls
on the garden wall
there’s a strum of singing strings
and through the mist of shade and sound
a dove with folded wings
As in a dream
the white bird seems
an old remembered melody
perched there so still
on the garden wall
a strange white feathered song
In shadowed light
a sweet time past
within the heart may fall
Such fragile things
spark memory
a wisp of sound
a haunting song
a feathered dream with folded wings
on a sequestered wall
Fair Science, please, present us astral keys
With which from this empowered speck in space
We may unlock the vaulted mysteries
To trace the trillioned miles to that far place
Unshackled, freed from the long-riddled curse]
We might invade truth’s flaming fields again,
To run the realms of reason and rehearse
The tantalizing questions that pursued
Us down the dim, dark aisles of time; to dwell
Content within God’s star-fired constant mood;
With childlike joy, to tell and overtell
How circling back from their long cosmic roam
The children of Adam and Eve at last came home.
There
Before me in beautiful design
Flowers
Rising in the air
I’ll remember
In future hours
The color, shape, and greening line
Of stem and leaf
And this is strange:
I knew
That roseate hue
Was one time born
For just that moment
That spot to adorn
Perhaps he sang a song,
We never heard
And if he did
In silent voice
–so far, so near—
The waves of soundless sound
Turned from the wall
Of our resistant inner ear,
And like the Little Prince
In a lonely desert
Vanishing without a trace,
Left us bereft
Strangely inconsolable
Yearning for some unknown
Some perfect word
Perhaps he sang a song
We should have heard