THE CROOKED STICK
First Traveler: What's that lying in the dust?
Second Traveler: A crooked stick.
First Traveler: What's it worth, if you can trust
To arithmetic?
Second Traveler: Isn't this a riddle?
First Traveler: No, a trick.
Second Traveler: It's worthless. Leave it where it lies.
First Traveler: Wait; count ten;
Rub a little dust upon your eyes;
Now, look again.
Second Traveler: Well, and what the devil is it, then?
First Traveler: It's the sort of crooked stick that shepherds know.
Second Traveler: Some one's loss!
First Traveler: Bend it, and you make of it a bow.
Break it, a cross.
Second Traveler: But it's all grown over with moss!
ATAVISM
I always was afraid of Somes's Pond:
Not the little pond, by which the willow stands,
Where laughing boys catch alewives in their hands
In brown, bright shallows; but the one beyond.
There, when the frost makes all the birches burn
Yellow as cow-lilies, and the pale sky shines
Like a polished shell between black spruce and pines,
Some strange thing tracks us, turning where we turn.
You'll say I dream it, being the true daughter
Of those who in old times endured this dread.
Look! Where the lily-stems are showing red
A silent paddle moves below the water,
A sliding shape has stirred them like a breath;
Tall plumes surmount a painted mask of death.
WILD PEACHES
1
When the world turns completely upside down
You say we'll emigrate to the Eastern Shore
Aboard a river-boat from Baltimore;
We'll live among wild peach trees, miles from town.
You'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold color.
Lost, like your lotus-eating ancestor,
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.
The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of cider and of scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all.
The squirrels in their silver fur will fall
Like falling leaves, like fruit, before your shot.
2