Past the fountain out of repair
And the boarded diner

A small studio
You"d never told anyone about

Where old clothes have remained
Right where you"ve dumped them

Side by side
With random notes and sketches

When someone close to you
Has a different idea of what you represent

He insisted
You"ll write a check for the loan

There were other misjudgments
As well. Exits were being blocked

Down every hall I walked

Until a sort of muscle memory —
Well, I knew it all along, of course,

Suffer as in allow.

List as in want.

Listless as in transcending
desire, or not rising
to greet it.

To list
is to lean,
dangerously,
to one side.

Have you forgotten?

Spent
as in exhausted.

Captain Enoch is small and spare
With a back that " cants to lea " ;
His face is wrinkled, but not from care —
It"s spending his days at sea,

Along with winds and tides and rain;
Tarred rope and salty spray;
Mast and canvas and anchor chain,
Till he"s battered and brown as they.

There"s not a port he doesn"t know,
From Iceland to Bombay,
And he talks of them when we"re out for a row
In the most familiar way.

He says how China"s a trifle hot;
And the folks are queer in Spain,
And he never met with any spot

My window opens upon the sea
And the smell of the sea comes in to me —
And the voice of the sea that calls and calls,
And the sea"s hands beating upon my walls.
Sometimes I wake in the night and hear

The sound of the sea, and it seems so near
That I wonder how I have strength of will
To listen and listen and lie so still.

I wonder how I can stay in bed
With a smoth"ring ceiling over my head!
I envy the men who can dip and ride
And drown, if they will, in the brown, salt tide.

O, why is a half-grown lad so free

I like the people who keep shops,
Busy and cheerful folk with friendly faces.
They handle lovely things — bulbs, seed and flowers,
China and glass and gay-backed magazines,
Velvet and satin, foreign silks and laces.

One keeps a stall that"s good to see,
Of nuts and fruits the morning sunlight dapples,
With dewy green things fresh from country gardens,
Tomatoes, bloomy plums and figs in baskets,
Melons and pears and red or russet apples.

The iron-monger charms me, too,

" There"ll be no roof to shelter you;
You"ll have no where to lay your head.
And who will get your food for you?
Star-dust pays for no man"s bread.
So, Jacky, come give me your fiddle
If ever you mean to thrive. "

" I"ll have the skies to shelter me,
The green grass it shall be my bed,
And happen I"ll find somewhere for me
A sup of drink, a bit of bread;
And I"ll not give my fiddle
To any man alive. "

And it"s out he went across the wold,
His fiddle tucked beneath his chin,
And (golden bow on silver strings)

The cows are bawling in the mountains,
Snowflakes fall.
They are leaving the pools and pebbled fountains,
Troubled, they bawl.
They are winding down the mountain"s shoulders
Through the open pines,
The wild rose thickets and the granite boulders
In broken lines.
Each calf trots close beside its mother,
And so they go,
Bawling and calling to one another
About the snow.

There"s something very lovely
In snowlight, in snowlight,
When day has gone and dusk is done,
And all the world is still;
When night comes down the meadow,
And low light, then no light
Except the soft, clear shine of snow
Is over wood and hill.

The little firs stand windless,
All darkly, all starkly;
The cedars and the sentry pines
Keep watch across the lawn;
And a rabbit carved in onyx
Sits peering, half fearing. ...
There"s magic in the snowlight
Between the dusk and dawn!

All spring I"d been playing hide and seek
with the groundhog living under the shed,
looking out for it when I went in or out
of the house, peeking from behind the garage
or sitting still enough reading in a lawn chair
that it would poke its head out tentatively
then venture farther by degrees to munch
my weedy lawn or just lounge in the sun,
our common pleasure. Its roguishness amused me,
as did the way it bolted toward the shed,
revealing the russet fur of its outstretched legs.

How different (though about the same size)

In the unbreaking summers
heat muffled even the stars
and the nights were a stalled black
sea with no smallest wind the days
empty as the ears of the deaf
the colors of forest and sky faded
like ageing ink and our hands lost
the rivering lines that named us

heat pulled the lakes and streams
out of their beds and took them elsewhere
hummingbirds fell from dulled air
into the dying flowers

Before much longer a child again
will learn water this time
not by touch but by absence