THE MYSTIC ROOSTER OF THE MONTANA SUNRISE
On the mountain peak, called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
I saw the rooster that no storm can tame,
The center of the sun was but his eye,
His comb was but the sun rays and the flame.
There in the Glacier Park, above white glaciers,
There, above Montana and the west,
He crowed and called his boast around the world,
Emotion shook his red embroidered vest.
There is humor in the very biggest rooster,
But even more magnificence than fun.
I laugh because he acted like a rooster,
I am solemn, for he was the biggest one.
I like a rooster or a turkey gobbler,
I like their forthright impudence at times.
They are neither larks, nor trilling nightingales,
And yet they always sing in splendid rhymes.
When I heard the vast bird of the sunrise crying,
The world held not one inch of silly prose.
Any rooster is a flowerlike fowl,
And this one was a crimson Yankee rose.
THE BIRD CALLED “CURIOSITY”
Round the mountain peak called “Going-To-The-Sun,”
In Glacier Park, a steep and soaring one,
Circled a curious bird with pointed nose
Who led us on to every cave, and rose
And swept through every cloud, then brought us berries,
And all the acid gifts the mountain carries,
And let us guess which ones were good to eat.
And even when we slept his sharp wings beat
The weary fire, or shook the tree-top cones,
Or rattled dead twigs like a fairy’s bones.
The vulgar bird, “Curiosity”! When we
Were tired, and lean, and shaking at the knee,
We put this bird in harness. He was strong
As any ostrich, pulled our packs along,
Helped us up over the next annoying wall,
And dragged us to the chalet, and the tourists’ resting hall.
And when once more we were young, well-fed men,
He beat the door to call us forth again.