"And will you cut a stone for him,
To set above his head?
And will you cut a stone for him--
A stone for him?" she said.
Three days before, a splintered rock
Had struck her lover dead--
Had struck him in the quarry dead,
Where, careless of a warning call,
He loitered, while the shot was fired--
......
I love to rise in a summer morn
When the birds sing on every tree;
The distant huntsman winds his horn,
And the skylark sings with me.
O! what sweet company!
But to go to school on a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
......
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
......
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:
And, when I crossed the wild,
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child.
No mate, no comrade Lucy knew;
She dwelt on a wide moor,
- The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door!
......
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
andI mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
......
ANGEL OF DEATH
He went to check
up on the cat
tripped over a
crooked vine table
tried to get up
smashed its circular
glass in half
moon shapes
......
Sprinting in the rainfall,
Here and there,
The childish me I hid somewhere.
Getting drenched as thunder rumbles,
Living carelessly because
I have someone to stable me when my foot fumbles.
Your hand in mine,
A lovely hold.
The bond we share
......
The sun falls,
And night begins,
Blue irises enthrall,
The eyes of my kin.
I never shared that ocean,
I was always miles behind,
always reachin',
never could unwind.
My eyes of grass,
On a summer's day,
......
it never came with conclusion as how the night took its time to raise a sunshine
to survive in the wild makes no sense for such a young wolf
to be part of a pack , to learn how to defend , avoid danger , hunt — crushed hares , bison , and moose
much more to be close to them all
blood dripping all the way to my mom’s home
at heightened peril of death , all lone and numb from hunger
wandering through unknown terrain , limping , some bones broken
no such scheme in mind for how the high spirits turned way upside down
to ponder why it unfolded just as it did
......
Father will be there
To heal me from my sickness
Any time today
Father will be there
And put me to sleep
This night
I need that badly
Father will be there
To pray together with me
Before I go to sleep
......