| THE BARE ARMS OF TREES Sometimes when I see the bare arms of trees in the evening I think of men who have died without love, Of desolation and space between branch and branch, I think of immovable whiteness and lean coldness and fear And the terrible longing between people stretched apart as these branches. And the cold space between. I think of the vastness and courage between this step and that step Of the yearning and fear of the meeting, of the terrible desire held apart. I think of the ocean of longing that moves between land and land And between people, the space and ocean. The bare arms of the trees are immovable without the play of Leaves, without the sound of wind; I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist between tree and tree As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk. ------------------------ THINE EYES STILL SHINED Thine eyes still shined for me, I lonely roved the land or sea: As I behold yon evening star, Which yet beholds not me. This morn I climbed the misty hill And roamed the pastures through; How danced thy form before my path Amidst the deep-eyed dew! When the redbird spread his sable wing, And showed his side of flame; When the rosebud ripened to the rose, In both I read thy name. -------------------- TREES To be a giant and keep quiet about it, To stay in one�s own place; to stand for the constant presence of process And always to seem the same; To be steady as a rock and always trembling, Having the hard appearance of death With the soft, fluent nature of growth, One�s Being deceptively armored, One�s becoming deceptively vulnerable; To be so tough, and to take the light so well, Freely providing forbidden knowledge Of so many things about heaven and earth For which we should otherwise have no word- Poems or people are rarely so lovely, And even when they have great qualities they tend to tell you rather than exemplify What they believe themselves to be about, While from the moving silence of trees, Whether in storm or calm, in leaf and naked, Night or day, we draw conclusions of our own, Sustaining and unnoticed as our breath, And perilous also - though there has never been A critical tree - about the nature of things. ------------------ DOG�S DEATH She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car. Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor And to win, wetting there, the words, �Good dog! Good dog!� We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction. The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver. As we teased her with play, blood was filing her skin And her heart was learning how to lie down forever. Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest�s bed. We found her twisted and limp but still alive. In the car to the vet�s on my lap, she tried To bite my hand, and died. I stroked her warm fur And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears. Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her, Nevertheless she sank, and stiffening, disappeared. Back home, we found that in the night her frame, Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog. |