poems48

A BLESSING
Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We stop over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl�s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
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MILKWEED
While I stood here, in the open, lost in myself,
I must have looked a long time
Down the corn rows, beyond the grass,
The small house,
White walls, animals lumbering toward the barn.
I look down now. It is all changed.
Whatever it was I lost, what ever I wept for
Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes
Loving me in secret.
It is here. At a touch of my hand,
The air fills with delicate creatures
From the other world.
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I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails
To the morning breeze and starts
For the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, at length,
She hangs like a speck of white cloud
Just where the sea and sky come to mingle
With eachother. Then, someone at my side says:
�There, she is gone!!� Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is
Just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was
When she left my side and she is just as able
To bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says
�There, she is gone!�
There are other eyes watching her coming
And other voices ready to take up the glad shout
�Here she comes!�
And that is dying.
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A CHURCH ROMANCE
She turned in the high pew, until her sight
Swept the west gallery, and caught its row
Of music-men, with viol, book, and bow
Against the sinking sad tower-window light.

She turned again; and in her pride�s despite
One strenuous viol�s inspirer seemed to throw
A message from his string to her below,
Which said: �I claim thee as my own forthright!�

Thus their hearts� bond began, in due time signed.
And long years thence, when Age had scared romance,
At some old attitude of his or glance
That gallery-scene would break upon her mind,
With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim,
Bowing �New Sabbath� or �Mount Ephraim�.