THE EXPOSED NEST

You were forever finding some new play. So when I saw you down on hands and knees In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay, Trying, I thought, to set it up on end, I went to show you how to make it stay, If that was your idea, against the breeze, And, if you asked me, even help pretend To make it root again and grow afresh. But ’twas no make-believe with you to-day, Nor was the grass itself your real concern, Though I found your hand full of wilted fern, Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover. ’Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground The cutter-bar had just gone champing over (Miraculously without tasting flesh) And left defenseless to the heat and light. You wanted to restore them to their right Of something interposed between their sight And too much world at once––could means be found. The way the nest-full every time we stirred Stood up to us as to a mother-bird Whose coming home has been too long deferred, Made me ask would the mother-bird return And care for them in such a change of scene And might our meddling make her more afraid. That was a thing we could not wait to learn. We saw the risk we took in doing good, But dared not spare to do the best we could Though harm should come of it; so built the screen 49 You had begun, and gave them back their shade. All this to prove we cared. Why is there then No more to tell? We turned to other things. I haven’t any memory––have you?–– Of ever coming to the place again To see if the birds lived the first night through, And so at last to learn to use their wings.

50

“OUT, OUT––”

The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood, Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it. And from there those that lifted eyes could count Five mountain ranges one behind the other Under the sunset far into Vermont. And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled, As it ran light, or had to bear a load. And nothing happened: day was all but done. Call it a day, I wish they might have said To please the boy by giving him the half hour That a boy counts so much when saved from work. His sister stood beside them in her apron To tell them “Supper.” At the word, the saw, As if to prove saws knew what supper meant, Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap–– He must have given the hand. However it was, Neither refused the meeting. But the hand! The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh, As he swung toward them holding up the hand Half in appeal, but half as if to keep The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all–– Since he was old enough to know, big boy Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart–– He saw all spoiled. “Don’t let him cut my hand off–– The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!” So. But the hand was gone already. The doctor put him in the dark of ether. He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath. 51 And then––the watcher at his pulse took fright. No one believed. They listened at his heart. Little––less––nothing!––and that ended it. No more to build on there. And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

52

BROWN’S DESCENT

or
THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE