The Otter

Related poetry:

1. To The River Otter Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West! How many various-fated years have passed, What happy and what mournful hours, since last I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast, Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes I never shut amid the sunny ray, […]...
2. Bells, Pool And Sleep Bells overbrim with sound And spread from cupolas Out through the shaking air Endless unbreaking circles Cool and clear as water. A stone dropped in the water Opens the lips of the pool And starts the unovertaking Rings, till the pool is full Of waves as the air of bells. The deep-sea bell of sleep […]...
3. The Gardener LXI: Peace, My Heart Peace, my heart, let the time for The parting be sweet. Let it not be a death but completeness. Let love melt into memory and pain Into songs. Let the flight through the sky end In the folding of the wings over the Nest. Let the last touch of your hands be Gentle like the […]...
4. One Morning Looking for distinctive stones, I found the dead otter Rotting by the tideline, and carried all day the scent of this savage Valediction. That headlong high sound the oystercatcher makes Came echoing through the rocky cove Where a cormorant was feeding and submarining in the bay And a heron rose off a boulder where he’d […]...
5. How Human Nature dotes How Human Nature dotes On what it can’t detect. The moment that a Plot is plumbed Prospective is extinct Prospective is the friend Reserved for us to know When Constancy is clarified Of Curiosity Of subjects that resist Redoubtablest is this Where go we Go we anywhere Creation after this?...
6. Shirley of Serendipity Where were you Shirley of the Sanguine Lake? Where did you disappear? The echoes of your empty house Were almost stilled yet held to soar the scheming rough And quaver in a hollow fear. We raked the mirrored water’s edge And poled the willow shrouded brakes, We plumbed the deep and darked ledge And traced […]...
7. By Loe Pool The pool glitters, the fishes leap in the sun With joyous fins, and dive in the pool again; I see the corn in sheaves, and the harvestmen, And the cows coming down to the water one by one. Dragon-flies mailed in lapis and malachite Flash through the bending reeds and blaze on the pool; Sea-ward, […]...
8. Hugo's "pool in the forest&quot How calm, how beauteous and how cool How like a sister to the skies, Appears the broad, transparent pool That in this quiet forest lies. The sunshine ripples on its face, And from the world around, above, It hath caught down the nameless grace Of such reflections as we love. But deep below its surface […]...
9. I think that the Root of the Wind is Water I think that the Root of the Wind is Water It would not sound so deep Were it a Firmamental Product Airs no Oceans keep Mediterranean intonations To a Current’s Ear There is a maritime conviction In the Atmosphere...
10. The Coney Although I have never learned to mow I suddenly found myself half-way through Last year’s pea-sticks And cauliflower stalks In our half-acre of garden. My father had always left the whetstone Safely wrapped In his old, tweed cap And balanced on one particular plank Beside the septic tank. This past winter he had been too […]...
11. In a Garden Gushing from the mouths of stone men To spread at ease under the sky In granite-lipped basins, Where iris dabble their feet And rustle to a passing wind, The water fills the garden with its rushing, In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns. Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone, Where trickle […]...
12. The Boiling Water A serious moment for the water is when it boils And though one usually regards it merely as a convenience To have the boiling water available for bath or table Occasionally there is someone Around who understands The importance of this moment for the water-maybe a saint, Maybe a poet, maybe a crazy man, or […]...
13. Though Deep Indifference Should Drowse THOUGH deep indifference should drowse The sluggish life beneath my brows, And all the external things I see Grow snow-showers in the street to me, Yet inmost in my stormy sense Thy looks shall be an influence. Though other loves may come and go And long years sever us below, Shall the thin ice that […]...
14. Lover's Gifts XVI: She Dwelt Here by the Pool She dwelt here by the pool with its landing-stairs in ruins. Many An evening she had watched the moon made dizzy by the shaking of Bamboo leaves, and on many a rainy day the smell of the wet earth Had come to her over the young shoots of rice. Her pet name is known here […]...
15. The house where I was born (10) And then life; and once again A house where I was born. Around us The granary above what once had been a church, The gentle play of shadow from the dawn clouds, And in us that smell of the dry straw That had seemed to be waiting for us From the moment the last sack, […]...
16. Penmaen Pool For the Visitors’ Book at the Inn Who long for rest, who look for pleasure Away from counter, court, or school O where live well your lease of leisure But here at, here at Penmaen Pool? You’ll dare the Alp? you’ll dart the skiff?- Each sport has here its tackle and tool: Come, plant the […]...
17. The Little Park Planted The little park planted in memory of a boy Who fell in the war begins To resemble him As he was twenty eight years ago. Year by year they look more alike. His old parents come almost daily To sit on a bench And look at him. And every night the memory in the garden […]...
18. Lion & Honeycomb He didn’t want to do it with skill, He’d had enough of skill. If he never saw Another villanelle, it would be too soon; And the same went for sonnets. If it had been Hard work learning to rime, it would be much Harder learning not to. The time came He had to ask himself, […]...
19. Shells Reaching down arm-deep into bright water I gathered on white sand under waves Shells, drifted up on beaches where I alone Inhabit a finite world of years and days. I reached my arm down a myriad years To gather treasure from the yester-milliennial sea-floor, Held in my fingers forms shaped on the day of creation. […]...
20. Clear, with Light, Variable Winds The fountain bent and straightened itself In the night wind, Blowing like a flower. It gleamed and glittered, A tall white lily, Under the eye of the golden moon. From a stone seat, Beneath a blossoming lime, The man watched it. And the spray pattered On the dim grass at his feet. The fountain tossed […]...
21. Poems On The Slave Trade – Sonnet I Hold your mad hands! for ever on your plain Must the gorged vulture clog his beak with blood? For ever must your Nigers tainted flood Roll to the ravenous shark his banquet slain? Hold your mad hands! what daemon prompts to rear The arm of Slaughter? on your savage shore Can hell-sprung Glory claim the […]...
22. Thirst My spirit wails for water, water now! My tongue is aching dry, my throat is hot For water, fresh rain shaken from a bough, Or dawn dews heavy in some leafy spot. My hungry body’s burning for a swim In sunlit water where the air is cool, As in Trout Valley where upon a limb […]...
23. "To-morrow to Fresh Woods and Pastures New&quot As for a moment he stands, in hardy masculine beauty, Poised on the fircrested rock, over the pool which below him Gleams in the wavering sunlight, waiting the shock of his plunging. So for a moment I stand, my feet planted firm in the present, Eagerly scanning the future which is so soon to possess […]...
24. The Boy The Boy from his bedroom-window Look’d over the little town, And away to the bleak black upland Under a clouded moon. The moon came forth from her cavern, He saw the sudden gleam Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland; Or perhaps the whole was a dream. For I never could find that water In […]...
25. Cinema Screen Light’s patterns freeze: Frost on our faces. Light’s pollen sifts Through the lids of our eyes… Light sinks and rusts In water; is broken By glass… rests On deserted dust. Light lies like torn Paper in corners: A rock-pool’s pledge Of the sea’s return. Light, wrenched at the edges By wind, looks down At itself […]...
26. Music I tied together A few slender reeds, cut Notches to breathe across and made Such music you stood Shock still and then Followed as I wandered growing Moment by moment Slant-eyes and shaggy, my feet Slamming over the rocks, growing Hard as horn, and there You were behind me, drowning In the music, letting The […]...
27. Restlessness At the open door of the room I stand and look at the night, Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight, Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room. I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light, And be out in the bewildering […]...
28. Clean Hands IT is something to face the sun and know you are free. To hold your head in the shafts of daylight slanting the earth And know your heart has kept a promise and the blood runs clean: It is something. To go one day of your life among all men with clean hands, Clean for […]...
29. Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair In The Moonlight 1 You scream, waking from a nightmare. When I sleepwalk Into your room, and pick you up, And hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me Hard, As if clinging could save us. I think You think I will never die, I think I exude To you the permanence of smoke or stars, […]...
30. Remembering Mountain Men I put my foot in cold water And hold it there: early mornings They had to wade through broken ice To find the traps in the deep channel With their hands, drag up the chains and The drowned beaver. The slow current Of the life below tugs at me all day. When I dream at […]...
31. May Morning I lie stretched out upon the window-seat And doze, and read a page or two, and doze, And feel the air like water on me close, Great waves of sunny air that lip and beat With a small noise, monotonous and sweet, Against the window and the scent of cool, Frail flowers by some brown […]...
32. Snake As cats bring their smiling Mouse-kills and hypnotised birds, Slinking home under the light Of a summer’s morning To offer the gift of a corpse, You carry home the snake you thought Was sunning itself on a rock At the river’s edge: Sun-fretted, gracile, It shimmies and sways in your hands Like a muscle of […]...
33. The Pike In the brown water, Thick and silver-sheened in the sunshine, Liquid and cool in the shade of the reeds, A pike dozed. Lost among the shadows of stems He lay unnoticed. Suddenly he flicked his tail, And a green-and-copper brightness Ran under the water. Out from under the reeds Came the olive-green light, And orange […]...
34. Ars Poetica A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. * A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as […]...
35. Loon Point Softly the water ripples Against the canoe’s curving side, Softly the birch trees rustle Flinging over us branches wide. Softly the moon glints and glistens As the water takes and leaves, Like golden ears of corn Which fall from loose-bound sheaves, Or like the snow-white petals Which drop from an overblown rose, When Summer ripens […]...
36. Song from Judith 3 BALKIS was in her marble town, And shadow over the world came down. Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, That all day dazzled eyes to tears, Turned from being white-golden flame, And like the deep-sea blue became. Balkis into her garden went; Her spirit was in discontent Like a torch in restless air. Joylessly she […]...
37. In Memoriam Mae Noblitt This is just a place: We go around, distanced, Yearly in a star’s Atmosphere, turning Daily into and out of Direct light and Slanting through the Quadrant seasons: deep Space begins at our Heels, nearly rousing Us loose: we look up Or out so high, sight’s Silk almost draws us away: This is just a […]...
38. In A Bath Teashop “Let us not speak, for the love we bear one another- Let us hold hands and look.” She such a very ordinary little woman; He such a thumping crook; But both, for a moment, little lower than the angels In the teashop’s ingle-nook....
39. Journey Into The Interior In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge At the sudden veering, the moment of turning. Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones. The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten […]...
40. Reedy River Ten miles down Reedy River A pool of water lies, And all the year it mirrors The changes in the skies, And in that pool’s broad bosom Is room for all the stars; Its bed of sand has drifted O’er countless rocky bars. Around the lower edges There waves a bed of reeds, Where water […]...