from Memories of President Lincoln
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
......
When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
He shouts to scare the monster who will often turn aside.
But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail,
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
When Nag, the wayside cobra, hears the careless foot of man,
He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can,
But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail -
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
......
SPONTANEOUS me, Nature,
The loving day, the mounting sun, the friend I am happy with,
The arm of my friend hanging idly over my shoulder,
The hill-side whiten'd with blossoms of the mountain ash,
The same, late in autumn--the hues of red, yellow, drab, purple, and
light and dark green,
The rich coverlid of the grass--animals and birds--the private
untrimm'd bank--the primitive apples--the pebble-stones,
Beautiful dripping fragments--the negligent list of one after
another, as I happen to call them to me, or think of them,
......
A SONG of the good green grass!
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms--a song of the soil of fields.
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers
handle the pitch-fork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husk'd maize.
For the lands, and for these passionate days, and for myself,
Now I awhile return to thee, O soil of Autumn fields,
Reclining on thy breast, giving myself to thee,
......
Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child
leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as
if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
......
I SOUTH AFRICA WOMAN AM I
I stand before you on rolling hills
Warts, wrinkles, crevices, oceans
Deserts, floods, strikes, loud laughs
In suffering and sub-atomic joy
Failures and victories
Stencilled on my skin
Wringing luminous blood
......
(In loving memory from her children left behind)
When you were needed, you were always there,
Doing tender things that revealed your care.
Love you displayed in many other ways;
Mother - our earthly saint of yesterdays.
Your compliments, sometimes overstated,
Pleased us no end - are still appreciated.
Warmhearted smiles with eyes aglow;
......
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
......
April Brooks was four years old, prattling a blue streak, like comets;
Or backwards walking time, seizing swiftly, days of golden promise.
April lived with parents and older sister, in the sunshine of a valley;
And petals wore dew pearls and fragrance, all along the green alley.
April and sister, Dawn, loved horses, though still too young to ride;
But, they adored fairy-tales about them, like lilac, at rose's bedside.
Fuchsia was the color of fall skies, and the fun year was fading away,
......