A little man,
In a pressed suit,
Standing before him,
Had dug a name out of the past,
And flung it at him
Under cover of law.
The big fellow
Leaned over him,
Like a steel girder,
Just for a moment,
Then swung around on his heel
Without striking.
And I thought of the big Newfoundland
I saw, asleep by a rock
The day before,
That was galvanized by a challenge,
But eyeing a cur,
He turned,
Yawned,
Closed one eye,
Then the other,
And slept.
The Morning Plunge
Clean-limbed and arrowy he shot his way
Into the crystal waters of the bay;
Full thirty-feet below the derrick's beam,
As a lithe salmon, leaping from a stream
Hangs, instant-poised, then arches for the plunge,
Driving with lightning fin a dexterous lunge
Down to his haunts, and trails, enwreathed in mists,
A flock of garnets chasing amethysts.
In Absentia
Erect and motionless he stood,
His face a hieroglyph of stone,
Stopped was his pulse, chilled was his blood,
And stiff each sinew, nerve and bone.
The spell an instant held him, when
His veins were swept by tidal power,
And then life's threescore years and ten
Were measured by a single hour.