The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke.
For view there are the houses opposite
Cutting the sky with one long line of wall
Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch
Monotony of surface & of form
Without a break to hang a guess upon.
No bird can make a shadow as it flies,
For all is shadow, as in ways o'erhung
By thickest canvass, where the golden rays
Are clothed in hemp. No figure lingering
......
About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays
-this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free., it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.
It must be Nova Scotia; only there
......
When I was a windy boy and a bit
And the black spit of the chapel fold,
(Sighed the old ram rod, dying of women),
I tiptoed shy in the gooseberry wood,
The rude owl cried like a tell-tale tit,
I skipped in a blush as the big girls rolled
Nine-pin down on donkey's common,
And on seesaw sunday nights I wooed
Whoever I would with my wicked eyes,
The whole of the moon I could love and leave
......
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
......
In silent night when rest I took
For sorrow near I did not look
I waked was with thund'ring noise
And piteous shrieks of dreadful voice.
That fearful sound of "Fire!" and "Fire!"
Let no man know is my desire.
I, starting up, the light did spy,
And to my God my heart did cry
To strengthen me in my distress
And not to leave me succorless.
......
House
He had a small but practical house
He quickly gets ready wherever he goes
A house, like a house, a little home, whatever you choose
But to have a house that goes with you
It must be a snail, a hermit crab, or Peter
This is the story of Peter's house that fits on his shoulder
Sometimes blisters him all the way
So Petar stops and fixes it
......
In a mass of blooms
sits a summer house all gold
on a sandy beach
Momentous waves each moment
of drama filled beauty days
Near the coral lane
adjoining bright reds and plums
beneath blues and cream
Orange and yellows in front
......
The house in the yellow daisies,
is captivated by breezy graces,
near a meadow very green.
Bluebirds flutter by in summer,
scarlet berry bushes to plunder,
where nature is queen.
Gold stars flash all springtime,
when crickets call for nighttime,
......
It has been ages since the laughter died, which was many suns ago,
Soon swept away by fleeting time, like the brief giggle of a rainbow.
My vacant halls now are silent, and the flower garden is overgrown,
Effusing rich and cloying fragrance, lovely nature reclaiming its own.
The tree boughs are overhanging, the bushes begging to be pruned,
Like a piano that once made beautiful music, is begging to be tuned.
The fruit trees so long neglected, has left fruit rotting on the ground,
......
House of sun,
where the colors sing.
Sunroom blooms!
Inner bliss
and adventures in perfume,
at sunset or noon.
Spring air wafts,
warm through the window-
Peach rose prance!
......