Short Poems

What make ole Satan da follow me so?
Satan hain't nottin' at all for to do wid me (Run seeker)
Hold your light, (Sister Mary,)
Hold your light, (Seeker turn back,)
Hold your light on Canaan shore.

You were too slow.
Long waited the vessel at the docks
Till the tide grew low
And the waves bared the rocks
And at last the pilot shook his head
And the eager sailors swarmed to the shrouds
And swan-like the ship moved from the harbor
On the shadow of clouds.

To a worthy Friend, who often objects the coldnesse of the Winter in Newfound-Land, and may serve for all those that have the like conceit.

You say that you would live in Newfound-land,
Did not this one thing your conceit withstand;
You feare the Winters cold, sharp, piercing ayre
They love it best, that have once wintered there.
Winter is there, short, wholesome, constant, cleare,
Not thicke, unwholesome, snuffling, as " tis here.

When the cooling tyre contracts
Round the felloe of the wheel,
Do not spokes that once were boughs
In close-knitting fibres feel
A glow in being ironbound
In unity secure and round
For conquest of untravelled ground?

At morning's call
The small-voiced pug-dog welcomes in the sun,
And flea-bit mongrels, wakening one by one,
Give answer all.

nothing left of the house
I was born in

Heaven
doesn't kill me
it makes me write poems
valiantly — that too
pitifully — that too

road running straight ahead
rolling a big thing

I keep asking
how deep
the snow's gotten.

The little knife —
sharpening pencils with it,
peeling pears.