Margaret
Many birds and the beating of wings Make a flinging reckless hum In the early morning at the rocks Above the blue pool Where the gray shadows swim lazy. In your blue eyes, O
Pennsylvania
I HAVE been in Pennsylvania, In the Monongahela and the Hocking Valleys. In the blue Susquehanna On a Saturday morning I saw the mounted constabulary go by, I saw boys playing marbles. Spring and
Hits and Runs
I REMEMBER the Chillicothe ball players grappling the Rock Island ball players in a sixteen-inning game ended by darkness. And the shoulders of the Chillicothe players were a red smoke against the sundown and
Potomac River Mist
ALL the policemen, saloonkeepers and efficiency experts in Toledo knew Bern Dailey; secretary ten years when Whitlock was mayor. Pickpockets, yeggs, three card men, he knew them all and how they flit from zone
Mill-Doors
YOU never come back. I say good-by when I see you going in the doors, The hopeless open doors that call and wait And take you then for how many cents a day? How
Skyscraper
BY day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and Has a soul. Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into It and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
The Sins of Kalamazoo
THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson. The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab. And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
Work Gangs
BOX cars run by a mile long. And I wonder what they say to each other When they stop a mile long on a sidetrack. Maybe their chatter goes: I came from Fargo with
They Buy With an Eye to Looks
THE FINE cloth of your love might be a fabric of Egypt, Something Sinbad, the sailor, took away from robbers, Something a traveler with plenty of money might pick up And bring home and
Wilderness
THERE is a wolf in me… fangs pointed for tearing gashes… a red tongue for raw meat… and the hot lapping of blood-I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and
Buffalo Dusk
THE BUFFALOES are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone. Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads
Testimony Regarding a Ghost
THE ROSES slanted crimson sobs On the night sky hair of the women, And the long light-fingered men Spoke to the dark-haired women, “Nothing lovelier, nothing lovelier.” How could he sit there among us
Dreams in the dusk
DREAMS in the dusk, Only dreams closing the day And with the day’s close going back To the gray things, the dark things, The far, deep things of dreamland. Dreams, only dreams in the
Corn Hut Talk
WRITE your wishes on the door and come in. Stand outside in the pools of the harvest moon. Bring in the handshake of the pumpkins. There’s a wish for every hazel nut? There’s a
Village in Late Summer
LIPS half-willing in a doorway. Lips half-singing at a window. Eyes half-dreaming in the walls. Feet half-dancing in a kitchen. Even the clocks half-yawn the hours And the farmers make half-answers.