Poetry Archives

Upon a gnarly, knotty limb
 That fought the current’s crest,
Where shocks of reeds peeped o’er the brim,
 Wild wasps had glued their nest.

And in a sprawling cypress’ grot,
 Sheltered and safe from flood,
Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot
 To shape his house of mud.

In a warm crevice of the bark
 A basking scorpion clung,
With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes
 And yellow, twinkling tongue.

A lunging trout flashed in the sun,
 To do some petty slaughter,
And set the spiders all a-run
 On little stilts of water.

Toward noon upon the swamp there stole
 A deep, cathedral hush,
Save where, from sun-splocht bough and bole,
 Sweet thrush replied to thrush.

An angler came to cast his fly
 Beneath a baffling tree.
I smiled, when I had caught his eye,
 And he smiled back at me.

When stretched beside a shady elm
 I watched the dozy heat,
Nature was moving in her realm,
 For I could hear her feet.