The poems in this collection are reprinted from "Mountain Interval," "North of Boston," and "A Boy's Will."

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I

THE PASTURE
THE COW IN APPLE-TIME
THE RUNAWAY

II

AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT
HOME BURIAL
THE DEATH OF THE HIRED MAN
A SERVANT TO SERVANTS
THE SELF-SEEKER
THE HILL WIFE
"OUT, OUT...."

III

PUTTING IN THE SEED
GOING FOR WATER
MOWING

IV

AFTER APPLE-PICKING
BIRCHES
THE GUM-GATHERER
THE MOUNTAIN
THE TUFT OF FLOWERS
MENDING WALL
AN ENCOUNTER
THE WOOD-PILE

V

SNOW
IN THE HOME STRETCH


VI

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN
THE OVEN BIRD
A VANTAGE POINT
THE SOUND OF TREES
HYLA BROOK
MY NOVEMBER GUEST
RANGE-FINDING
OCTOBER
TO THE THAWING WIND

VII

A TIME TO TALK
THE CODE
A HUNDRED COLLARS
BLUEBERRIES
BROWN'S DESCENT OR, THE WILLY-NILLY SLIDE

VIII

REVELATION
STORM-FEAR
BOND AND FREE
FLOWER-GATHERING
RELUCTANCE
INTO MY OWN

I'm heading out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll just pause to rake the leaves away
(And wait to see if the water clears, maybe):
I won’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to get the little calf
That’s standing by its mother. It’s so young,
It wobbles when she licks it with her tongue.
I won’t be gone long.—You come too.

Something inspires the only cow lately
To see a wall as nothing more than an open gate,
And think of wall-builders as fools.
Her face is splattered with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. After tasting fruit,
She turns her nose up at a pasture fading to the roots.
She races from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
The windfalls covered in stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them half-eaten when she has to leave.
She bellows on a hill against the sky.
Her udder shrinks and the milk runs dry.

Once when the year's snow was starting to
autumn
We stopped by a mountain pasture to ask, "Whose
young horse?
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,
The other tucked against his chest. He lowered his head
And snorted at us. Then he took off.
We heard the tiny thunder as he ran,
And we saw him, or thought we did, faint and
gray
Like a shadow against the backdrop of falling snowflakes.
"I think the little guy's scared of the snow.
He isn't used to winter. It isn't play
For him at all. He's running away.
I doubt even his mother could tell him, 'Calm down,
It's just the weather.' He'd think she didn't know!
Where is his mother? He can't be out alone."
And now he comes back with a clatter of stones
And climbs the wall again with wide eyes
And all his tail standing straight up.
He shakes his coat like he's trying to get rid of flies.
"Whoever is leaving him out this late,
When other animals have gone to their stalls and bins,
Should be told to come and get him inside."

Everything outside looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost like separate stars,
That gathers on the glass in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from returning the stare
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood surrounded by barrels—at a loss.
And having startled the cellar beneath him
With his heavy footsteps, he startled it again
As he clomped away;—and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and the crack of branches, common things,
But nothing like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, preoccupied with what he knew,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He entrusted to the moon, as she was,
So late to rise, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a task, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to tend;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he moved,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One old man—just one man—can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's like this he does it on a winter night.

He saw her from the bottom of the stairs
Before she saw him. She was starting down,
Looking back over her shoulder with some fear.
She took a hesitant step and then reversed it
To raise herself and look again. He spoke
As he moved toward her: "What is it you see
From up there all the time—for I want to know."
She turned and sat on her skirts at that,
And her face changed from scared to blank.
He asked to buy some time: "What is it you see?"
Climbing until she shrank beneath him.
"I’ll find out now—you must tell me, dear."
She, in her place, refused him any help
With the least stiffening of her neck and silence.
She let him look, sure that he wouldn't see,
Blind creature; and for a while he didn't see.
But finally he murmured, "Oh," and again, "Oh."

"What is it—what?" she said.
"Just that I see it."

"You don't," she challenged. "Tell me what it is."

"The amazing thing is I didn’t see it right away.
I never noticed it from here before.
I must have gotten used to it—that's why.
The little graveyard where my family is!
So small the window frames all of it.
Not much larger than a bedroom, is it?
There are three slate stones and one marble,
Short little slabs there in the sunlight
On the hillside. We don’t have to worry about those.
But I get it: it isn’t the stones,
But the child’s mound——"

"Don't, don't, don't, don't," she yelled.

She pulled away, shrinking from beneath his arm
That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
And confronted him with such a daring look,
He said twice before realizing:
"Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?"

"Not you! Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don't
need it!
I have to get out of here. I need some air.
I don’t know if any man can."

"Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.
Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs."
He sat and rested his chin in his hands.
"There’s something I’d like to ask you, dear."

"You don’t know how to ask it."

"Please help me."

Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

"My words usually offend.
I don't know how to talk about anything
So as to please you. But I guess I could be taught.
I don’t see how, though.
A man must partly give up being a man
With women. We could have some
understanding
By which I’d promise to keep my hands off
Anything specific you want to mention.
Though I dislike such things between those that
love.
Two who don’t love can’t live together without
them.
But two who do can’t live together with them."
She moved the latch a little. "Don’t—don’t go.
Don’t take it to someone else this time.
Share it with me if it’s something human.
Let me into your grief. I’m not so different
From other folks as your standing there
Apart would suggest. Give me my chance.
I do believe, though, you’re overdoing it a bit.
What made you think it was right
To take your mother’s loss of a first child
So inconsolably—in the face of love.
You’d think his memory might be enough——"

"There you go sneering now!"

"I'm not, I'm not!"
You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
A man can’t talk about his own dead child."
"You can’t because you don't know how.
If you had any feelings, you who dug
With your own hands—how could you?—his little
grave;
I saw you from that very window there,
Making the gravel leap and leap in the air,
Leap up, like that, like that, and land so lightly
And roll back down the mound beside the hole.
I thought, Who is that man? I didn’t know you.
And I crept down and up the stairs
To look again, and still your spade kept lifting.
Then you came in. I heard your rumbling voice
Out in the kitchen, and I don’t know why,
But I went near to see with my own eyes.
You could sit there with the stains on your shoes
From the fresh earth of your own baby’s grave
And talk about your everyday matters.
You had stood the spade up against the wall
Outside there in the hallway, for I saw it."

"I’ll laugh the hardest laugh I ever laughed.
I’m cursed. God, I feel like I’m cursed."
"I can repeat the very words you were saying.

'Three foggy mornings and one rainy day
Will rot the best birch fence a man can build.'
Think about it, talking like that at such a time!
What had how long it takes a birch to rot
To do with what was in the darkened living room?
You couldn't care! The closest friends can go
With anyone to death, but they still fall so short
They might as well not try at all.
No, from the time when one is dying,
One is alone, and he dies even more alone.
Friends pretend to follow you to the grave,
But before you’re in it, their minds turn
And they’re making the best of their way back to life
And living people, and things they understand.
But the world’s cruel. I won’t have grief like that
If I can change it. Oh, I won't, I won't!"

"There, you’ve said it all and you feel better.
You won't leave now. You’re crying. Close the door.
The heart's gone out of it: why keep it up?
Amy! There’s someone coming down the road!"

"You—oh, you think the talk is everything. I must leave—
Somewhere out of this house. How can I make
you—

"If—you—do!" She was opening the door wider.
"Where do you plan to go? First tell me that.
I’ll follow and bring you back by force. I will!——"

Mary sat thinking about the flame of the lamp at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his footsteps,
She rushed on tiptoe down the dim hallway
To greet him at the door with the news
And warn him. "Silas is back."

She pushed him outside with her through the door
And closed it behind her. "Be kind," she said.
She took the groceries from Warren's arms
And set them on the porch, then pulled him down
To sit next to her on the wooden steps.

"When have I ever been anything but kind to him?
But I'm not taking the guy back," he said.
"I told him that last haying, didn’t I?
'If he left then,' I said, 'that was it.'
What good is he? Who else will take him in
At his age for the little he can do?
The help he is never can be counted on.
He always bails when I need him most.

'He thinks he should earn a little pay,
At least enough to buy tobacco,
So he won't have to beg and feel obligated.'
'Fine,' I said, 'I can’t afford to pay
Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.'
'Someone else can.' 'Then someone else will have
to.'
I wouldn't mind him bettering himself
If that's really what it was. You can be sure,
When he starts talking like that, there's someone enticing him
With pocket money,—
During haying season, when help is hard to find.
In winter, he comes back to us. I'm done."

"Sh! Don't be so loud: he'll hear you," Mary said.

"I want him to: he'll have to eventually."

"He's worn out. He's sleeping by the stove.
When I came back from Rowe’s, I found him here,
Huddled against the barn door fast asleep,
A pitiful sight and scary, too—
You don’t have to smile—I didn’t recognize him—
I wasn't looking for him—and he's changed.
Just wait till you see."

"Where did you say he was?"

"He didn’t say. I dragged him to the house,
And gave him tea and tried to get him to smoke.
I tried to make him talk about his travels.
Nothing worked: he just kept nodding off."

"What did he say? Did he say anything?"

"But a little."

"Anything? Mary, just admit it."
He said he’d come to ditch the meadow for me."

"Warren!"

"But did he? I just want to find out."

"Of course he did. What else would you have him say?
Surely you wouldn’t begrudge the poor old man
Some small way to save his self-respect.
He added, if you really want to know,
He meant to clear the upper pasture too.
That sound familiar?
Warren, I wish you could have heard how
He mixed everything up. I stopped to look
Two or three times—he made me feel so strange—
To check if he was talking in his sleep.
He rambled on about Harold Wilson—you remember—
The boy you had during haying four years ago.
He’s done with school, and teaching at his college.
Silas is convinced you need to bring him back.
He says the two of them will be a great team:
Together they’ll make this farm as smooth as silk!
The way he mixed that in with other things.
He thinks young Wilson is a promising kid, even though he’s
A bit of a bookworm—you know how they fought
All through July under the blazing sun,
Silas up on the cart to stack the load,
Harold right beside him to pitch it on."

"Yeah, I stayed well out of earshot."

"Well, those days festering haunt Silas like a bad dream.
You wouldn't think they would. How some memories
hang on!
Harold's young college boy's confidence irritated him.
After all these years, he still keeps finding
Good arguments he realizes he might have used.
I sympathize. I know exactly what it feels like
To think of the right thing to say too late.
Harold's linked in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he enjoyed it—that an argument!
He said he couldn’t make the boy believe
He could find water with a hazel stick—
Which shows just how little good school ever did
him.
He wanted to go over that. But mostly
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to stack a load of hay——"

"I know, that's Silas' one skill.
He packs every forkful perfectly,
And labels and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily remove it
When unloading. Silas does that well.
He takes it out in bunches like big birds’ nests.
You never see him just standing on the hay
He’s trying to lift, straining to lift himself."

"He thinks if he could teach him that, he’d be
Of use to someone in the world.
He hates to see a boy become a know-it-all with books.
Poor Silas, so worried about others,
With nothing to look back on with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now is always the same as before."

A portion of the moon was sinking down the west,
Dragging the whole sky with it to the hills.
Its light poured softly into her lap. She noticed
And spread her apron to catch it. She reached out her hand
Among the harp-like morning-glory vines,
Taut with dew from garden bed to the eaves,
As if she played an unheard melody of tenderness
That worked on him beside her in the night.
"Warren," she said, "he's come home to die:
You don't need to worry he’ll leave you this time."

"Home," he gently mocked.

"Of course, what else could it be but home?"

It all depends on what you mean by home.
Of course, he means nothing to us anymore
Than the stray dog that came to us
Out of the woods, worn out from the journey."

"Home is the place where, when you have to go
there,
They have to take you in."

"I would have named it"
Something you don’t have to earn."

Warren leaned out and took a step or two,
Picked up a little stick, and brought it back
And broke it in his hand and tossed it aside.
"Do you think Silas has a better claim on us
Than he does on his brother? Thirteen little miles
As the road twists could take him to his door.
Silas has surely walked that far today.
Why didn’t he go there? His brother's rich,
A somebody—a bank director."

"He never mentioned that to us."

"We know that, though."

"I think his brother should help, of course.
I’ll make sure of that if there’s a need. He should rightfully
Take him in, and he might be willing to—
He may be better than he appears.
But have some sympathy for Silas. Do you think
If he had any pride in claiming family
Or anything he expected from his brother,
He'd have kept so quiet about him this whole time?"

"I wonder what’s going on between them."

"I can share."
Silas is who he is—we wouldn’t mind him—
But just the kind that relatives can’t tolerate.
He never did anything so very bad.
He doesn’t know why he isn't quite as good
As anyone. He won’t feel ashamed
To please his brother, worthless though he may be."

"I can’t believe Si ever hurt anyone."
"No, but he hurt my heart the way he lay
And rolled his old head on that sharp-edged
backrest.
He wouldn’t let me lay him on the couch.
You must go in and see what you can do.
I made the bed up for him there tonight.
You'll be surprised at him—how much he’s fallen apart.
His working days are over; I’m sure of it."

"I wouldn't rush to say that."

"I haven't been. Go, look, see for yourself.
But, Warren, please remember how it is:
He's come to help you ditch the meadow.
He has a plan. You mustn’t laugh at him.
He might not talk about it, and he might.
I’ll sit and see if that small sailing cloud
Will hit or miss the moon."

It struck the moon.
Then there were three there, making a soft row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she.

Warren came back—too soon, it seemed to her,
Slipped to her side, took her hand and waited.

"Warren," she asked.

"Dead," was all he said.

I didn’t let you know how happy I was
To have you come and camp here on our land.
I promised myself I’d visit someday
And see how you lived, but I’m not sure!
With a house full of hungry men to feed
I guess you’d find... It seems to me
I can’t express my feelings any more
Than I can raise my voice or want to lift
My hand (oh, I can lift it when I have to).
Did you ever feel like this? I hope you never do.
I’ve reached a point where I don’t really know
If I’m glad, sorry, or anything at all.
There’s just a voice left inside me
That seems to tell me how I should feel,
And would feel if I wasn’t all wrong.
You take the lake. I look and look at it.
I see it’s a beautiful, shiny sheet of water.
I stand and make myself say out loud
The pluses it has, so long and narrow,
Like a deep part of some old running river
Cut short at both ends. It stretches five miles
Straight through the mountain notch
From the window where I wash the dishes,
And all our storms come up toward the house,
Making the slow waves whiter and whiter and
whiter.
It took my mind off doughnuts and soda biscuits
To step outside and see the water shimmer
On a sunny morning, or feel the rising wind
On my face and body and through my wrap,
When a storm threatened from the Dragon’s Den,
And a cold chill spread across the lake.
I see it’s a beautiful, shiny sheet of water,
Our Willoughby! How did you hear about it?
I guess, though, everyone’s heard of it.
In a book about ferns? Listen to that!
You let things lighter than air control
Your coming and going. And you like it here?
I can see why you might. But I don’t know!
It would be different if more people came,
Because then there would be activity. As it is,
The cottages Len built, sometimes we rent them,
Sometimes we don’t. We have a good piece of shore
That should be worth something, and may yet.
But I don’t rely on it as much as Len.
He looks on the bright side of everything,
Including me. He thinks I’ll be fine
With the doctoring. But it’s not medicine—
Lowe is the only doctor who has dared to say so—
It’s rest I need—there, I’ve said it out loud—
From cooking meals for hungry hired men
And washing dishes after them—from doing
Things over and over that just won’t stay done.
By rights, I shouldn’t have so much
Pressed on me, but it seems there’s no other way.
Len says one more steady pull should do it.
He says the best way out is always through.
And I agree with that, at least for now
Because I can’t see any other way but through—
At least for me—and then they’ll be convinced.
It’s not that Len doesn’t want the best for me.
It was his idea for us to move over here
Beside the lake from where I showed you
We used to live—ten miles from anywhere.
We didn’t change without some sacrifice,
But Len went at it to make up for the loss.
His work is a man’s job, of course, from dawn to dusk,
But he works as hard as I do—
Though it’s pointless to compare.
(Women and men will always make those comparisons.)
But work isn’t everything. Len takes on too much.
He’s involved in everything in town. This year
It’s highways, and he has too many men
Around him to manage who make waste.
They take advantage of him shamefully,
And are proud of themselves for doing so.
We have four here boarding, good-for-nothings,
Lazing around the kitchen with their chatter
While I fry their bacon. They don’t care!
Not bothered in the least by what they do or say
As if I weren’t even in the room at all.
Coming and going all the time, they are:
I don’t learn their names, let alone
Their personalities, or whether they are safe
To have inside the house with the doors unlocked.
I’m not afraid of them, though, if they’re not
Afraid of me. There are two can play that game.
I have my quirks: it runs in the family.
My father’s brother wasn’t right in the head. They kept him
Locked up for years back there at the old farm.
I’ve been away once—yes, I’ve been away.
The State Asylum. I was biased;
I wouldn’t have sent anyone in my family there;
You know the old idea—the only asylum
Was the poorhouse, and those who could afford it,
Rather than send their loved ones to such a place,
Kept them at home; and it seems more humane.
But that’s not the case: the place is the asylum.
There they have every means to do what’s proper,
And you’re not darkening other people’s lives—
Worse than being no good to them, and they no good
To you in your state; you can’t know
Love or its absence in that condition.
I’ve heard too much of the old-fashioned way.
My father’s brother went mad quite young.
Some thought he’d been bitten by a dog,
Because his violence took on the form
Of carrying his pillow in his teeth;
But it’s more likely he was heartbroken,
Or so the story goes. It was some girl.
Anyway, all he talked about was love.
They soon realized he would do someone harm
If he wasn’t watched closely, and it ended
With my father building him a sort of cage,
Or room within a room, made of hickory poles,
Like stanchions in the barn, from floor to ceiling—
A narrow corridor all the way around.
Whatever they put in for furniture
He’d rip to shreds, even a bed to lie on.
So they made the place comfortable with straw,
Like a beast’s stall, to ease their consciences.
Of course they had to feed him without dishes.
They tried to keep him clothed, but he’d parade
With his clothes draped over his arm—all of them.
Cruel—it sounds. I suppose they did their best
With what they knew. And just when he was at his peak,
Father and mother married, and mother came,
A bride, to help care for such a creature,
And adjust her young life to his.
That’s what marrying father meant to her.
She had to listen to love things made dreadful
By his shouting at night. He’d shout and shout
Until he’d shouted all his strength out,
And his voice would slowly die down from exhaustion.
He’d pull his bars apart like a bow and bowstring,
And let them go to make them twang until
His hands had worn them smooth as any ox-bow.
And then he’d crow as if he thought it was child’s
play—
The only fun he had. I’ve heard people say, though,
They found a way to stop it.
He was before my time—I never saw him;
But the pen remained exactly as it was
There in the upper room in the ell,
A sort of catch-all full of attic clutter.
I often think of the smooth hickory bars.
It got to the point where I’d say—you know, half joking—
“It’s time I took my turn upstairs in jail”—
Just like you will until it becomes a habit.
No wonder I was glad to get away.
Mind you, I waited until Len gave the green light.
I didn’t want the blame if things went south.
I was so glad, though, when we moved out,
And I expected to be happy, and I was,
As I said, for a while—but I don’t know!
Somehow the change wore off like an old prescription.
And there’s more to it than just window views
And living by a lake. I’m past that kind of help—
Unless Len felt like changing his mind, which he won’t,
And I won’t ask him—it’s not reliable enough.
I guess I have to follow the path I’m on:
Other people have to, so why shouldn’t I?
I almost think if I could do like you,
Drop everything and live outdoors—
But maybe, come night, I wouldn’t like it,
Or if there was a long rain. I’d soon get tired of it,
And appreciate having a good roof overhead.
I’ve lain awake thinking of you, I bet,
More than you have yourself, some of these nights.
I wonder how the tents weren’t swept away
From over you as you lay in your beds.
I don’t have the courage for a risk like that.
Bless you, of course, you’re keeping me from work,
But the truth is, I need to be kept.
There’s always enough work to do—there’s always that;
But what’s behind is behind. The worst you can do
Is set me back a little more behind.
I won’t catch up in this world anyway.
I’d prefer if you didn’t go unless you must.

"Willis, I didn't want you here today:
The lawyer's coming for the company.
I'm going to sell my soul, or, rather, my feet.
Five hundred dollars for the pair, you know."

"With you, the feet have almost been your soul;
And if you're going to sell them to the devil,
I want to see it happen. When's he coming?"

"I have a feeling you knew and came on purpose
To help me drive a better deal."

"Well, if that's true! Yours aren't just any feet.
The lawyer doesn’t understand what he's buying:
So many miles you could have walked you won't
walk.
You haven't run your forty orchids down.
What does he think?—How are those blessed feet?
The doctor is sure you're going to walk again?"

"He thinks I’ll hobble. It’s both legs and feet."

"They must look terrible—I mean to look at."

"I haven't dared to look at them uncovered.
Through the bed blankets, I remind myself
Of a starfish laid out with rigid points."

"The wonder is it wasn't your head."

"It's hard to explain how it happened.
When I saw the shaft had me by the coat,
I didn't try too long to pull away,
Or fumble for my knife to cut free,
I just embraced the shaft and rode it out—
Until Weiss shut off the water in the wheel-pit.
That's how I think I didn't lose my head,
But my legs got knocked against the ceiling."

"Awful. Why didn't they just throw off the belt
Instead of going all the way down in the wheel-pit?"

"They say some time was wasted on the belt—
Old streak of leather—doesn't love me much
Because I made him spit fire at my knuckles,
Like Ben Franklin did with the kite string.
That must be it. Some days he won’t stay on.
That day, a woman couldn’t coax him off.
He’s on his rounds now with his tail in his mouth
Snatched right and left across the silver pulleys.
Everything goes the same without me there.
You can hear the small buzz saws whine, the big saw
Caterwauling to the hills around the village
As they both bite into the wood. It's all our music.
One ought, as a good villager, to like it.
No doubt it has a sort of prosperous sound,
And it's our life."

"Yeah, as long as it’s not our death."

"You make it sound like everything's like that.
What we live by, we die by.
I wonder where my lawyer is. His train's in.
I want this over with; I’m hot and tired."

"You're getting ready to do something foolish."

"Will you watch for him? Let him in.
I'd rather Mrs. Corbin didn’t know;
I've been here so long, she thinks she owns me.
You're bad enough to manage without her."

"And I'm going to be worse instead of better.
You need to tell me how far this has gone:
Have you agreed to any price?"

500.
Five hundred—five—five! One, two, three, four,
five. You don't need to look at me."

"I don't believe you."

"I told you, Willis, when you first came in.
Don't be hard on me. I have to take
What I can get. You see they have the feet,
Which gives them the upper hand in the trade.
I can't get the feet back anyway."

"But your flowers, man, you're selling your
flowers.

"Yes, that's one way to put it—all the flowers
Of every kind everywhere in this region
For the next forty summers—let's call it forty.
But I'm not selling those, I'm giving them,
They never earned me so much as one cent:
Money can't pay me for losing them.
No, the five hundred was the amount they named
To pay the doctor's bill and tide me over.
It's that or fight, and I don't want to fight—
I just want to settle into my life,
As it’s going to be, and know the worst,
Or the best—it may not be so bad. The firm
Promises me all the shooks I want to nail."

"But what about your flora of the valley?"

"You got me there. But that—you didn’t think
That was worth anything to me? Still, I own
It bothers me not finishing it
For the friends it might bring me. By the way,
I had a letter from Burroughs—did I tell you?—
About my Cyprepedium reginœ;
He says it’s not reported so far north.
There! there’s the bell. He’s rung. But you go
down
And bring him up, and don't let Mrs. Corbin.—
Oh, well, we’ll be through with it soon. I’m tired."

Willis brought up not only the Boston lawyer
But a little barefoot girl who, with the noise
Of heavy footsteps in the old frame house,
And the lawyer's baritone importance,
Stood for a while unnoticed with her hands
Shyly behind her.

"Well, how is Mr.—"
The lawyer was already digging in his satchel
As if for papers that might bear the name
He didn’t have at hand. "You must excuse me,
I dropped in at the mill and was delayed."

"Looking around, I suppose," said Willis.

"Yes,
Sure, yes."

"Did you hear anything that could be helpful?"

The Broken One saw Anne. "Why, here’s Anne.
What do you want, dear? Come, stand by the bed;
Tell me, what is it?" Anne just shook her dress
With both hands held behind her. "Guess," she
said.

"Oh, guess which hand? My, my! Once upon a
time
I knew a lovely way to tell for certain
By looking in the ears. But I forget it.
Er, let me see. I think I’ll take the right.
That’s sure to be right even if it’s wrong.
Come, hold it out. Don’t change.—A Ram's Horn
orchid!
A Ram's Horn! What would I have gotten, I wonder,
If I had chosen left? Hold out the left.
Another Ram's Horn! Where did you find those,
Under what beech tree, on what woodchuck's knoll?"

Anne looked at the large lawyer at her side,
And thought she wouldn't dare take that much.

"Were there no others?"

"There were four or five.
I knew you wouldn't let me choose them all."

"I wouldn't—so I wouldn't. You're the girl!
You see Anne has her lesson learned by heart."

"I wanted there to be some left for next year."

"Of course you did. You left the rest for seed,
And for the backwoods woodchuck. You're the girl!
A Ram's Horn orchid seed pod for a woodchuck
Sounds about right. Better than farmer's beans
To a discerning palate,
Though the Ram's Horn is rarely found
In bushel lots—doesn't come on the market.
But, Anne, I’m worried; have you told me everything?
You're hiding something. That’s as bad as lying.
You ask this lawyer guy. And it’s not safe
With a lawyer around to find you out.
Nothing is hidden from some people, Anne.
You can’t tell me that where you found a Ram's
Horn
You didn’t find a Yellow Lady's Slipper.
What did I tell you? What? I would blush, I would.
Don’t defend yourself. If it was there,
Where is it now, the Yellow Lady's Slipper?"

"Well, wait—it’s common—it’s too common."

"Common?
The Purple Lady's Slipper is more common."

"I didn't bring a Purple Lady's Slipper
To You—to you I mean—they're both too
common.

The lawyer laughed among his papers
As if with some idea that she had a point.

"I’ve stopped Anne from gathering bouquets.
It's not fair to the child. It can’t be helped
though
Pressed into service means pressed out of shape.
Somehow I’ll make it right with her—she’ll see.
She’s going to do my scouting in the field,
Over stone walls and along a wood
And by a riverbank for water flowers,
The floating Heart, with small leaves like a heart,
And at the sinus underwater, a fist
Of little fingers all kept down but one,
And that one thrust up to blossom in the sun
As if to say 'You! You're the Heart's desire.'
Anne has a way with flowers that fills the gap
Of what she’s lost: she goes down on one knee
And lifts their faces by the chin to hers
And says their names and leaves them where they
are.

The lawyer had a watch whose case
Was cleverly designed to make a noise
Like a small pistol when he snapped it shut
At a time like this. He snapped it now.

"Well, Anne, go, dearie. Our business will wait.
The lawyer is thinking of his train.
He wants to give me lots and lots of money
Before he goes, because I hurt myself,
And who knows how long that may take him.
But put our flowers in water first. Will, help her:
The pitcher’s too full for her. There’s no cup?
Just hook them onto the inside of the pitcher.
Now run.—Get out your documents! You see
I have to stay on Anne's good side.
I’m good at looking out for number one.
And you can’t blame me in the position I'm in.
Who will take care of my needs
Unless I do?"

"A pleasant break,"
The lawyer said: "I'm sorry, but my train——
Luckily, terms are all agreed upon.
You just have to sign your name. Right—there."

"You, Will, stop making faces. Come around here
Where you can’t make them. What do you want?
I'll put you out with Anne. Be good or go."

"You don't mean you will sign that thing unread?"

"Make yourself useful then and read it for me.
Isn't it something I’ve seen before?"

"You'll find it is. Let your friend take a look at it."

"Yes, but all that takes time, and I'm just as much
In a hurry to get it over with as you.
But read it, read it. That’s right, draw the curtain:
Half the time, I don’t know what’s bothering me.—
What do you say, Will? Don’t be a fool.
You! crumpling folks’ legal documents.
Spit it out if you have any real objections."

"Five hundred dollars!"

"What do you believe is right?"

"A thousand wouldn't be a cent too much;
You know it, Mr. Lawyer. The mistake is
Accepting anything before he knows
Whether he’s ever going to walk again.
It smells to me like a dishonest trick."

"I think—I think—from what I heard today—
And saw myself—he would be ill-advised——"

"What did you hear, for instance?" Willis asked.

"Now the place where the accident happened——"

The Broken One twisted in his bed.
"This is between you two apparently.
Where I come in is what I want to know.
You stand up to it like a couple of roosters.
Go outside if you want to fight. Spare me.
When you come back, I’ll have the papers signed.
Will a pencil do? Then please, your fountain pen.
One of you hold my head up from the pillow."

Willis jumped off the bed. "I wash my hands—
I'm no match—no, and don’t pretend to be——"

The lawyer gravely capped his fountain pen.
"You’re doing the smart thing: you won’t regret it.
We're very sorry for you."

Willis mocked:
"Who’s we?—some shareholders in Boston?
I'll go outside, by gosh! and won’t come back."

"Willis, bring Anne back with you when you come.
Yes. Thanks for caring. Don’t mind Will: he’s
fierce.
He thinks you should pay me for my flowers.
You wouldn’t understand what I mean about the flowers.
Don’t stop to try now. You’ll miss your train.
Goodbye." He flung his arms around his face.

One shouldn't have to care
As much as you and I
Care when the birds come around the house
To appear to say goodbye;

Or care so much when they return
With whatever they sing;
The truth is we are just as much
Too happy for one thing

As we are too sad for the other here—
With birds that bring them joy
But with each other and themselves
And their constructed or maneuvered nests.

Always—I tell you this they learned—
Always at night when they returned
To the lonely house from far away
To unlit lamps and a gray fire,
They learned to rattle the lock and key
To give whatever might be around
A warning and time to get away:
And preferring the outdoors to the indoors at night,
They learned to leave the door wide open
Until they had lit the lamp inside.

I didn't like how he walked away.
That smile! It never came from being happy.
Still, he smiled—did you see him?—I was sure!
Maybe because we only gave him bread
And he knew from that that we were struggling.
Maybe because he let us give instead
Of taking from us like he could have done.
Maybe he mocked us for being married,
Or for being so young (and he was glad
To picture us old and dead).
I wonder how far down the road he’s gotten.
He’s probably watching from the woods.

She had no words dark enough
For the dark pine that remained
Forever trying to open the window
Of the room where they slept.

The tireless but useless hands
That with every futile attempt
Made the great tree seem like a little bird
Before the mystery of glass!

It had never been inside the room,
And only one of the two
Was afraid in a recurring dream
What the tree could do.

It was too lonely for her there,
And too crazy,
And since there were only the two of them,
And no kid,

And there wasn’t much to do around the house,
She was liberated,
And followed wherever he plowed the fields,
Or firewood.

She took a break on a log and tossed
The new chips,
Singing a tune just for herself
Under her breath.

Once, she went to break a branch
From a black alder tree.
She wandered so far that she barely heard
When he phoned her—

And didn’t answer—didn’t say a word—
Or come back later.
She stood still, and then she ran and hid
In the ferns.

He never found her, even though he searched
Everywhere,
And he asked at her mom’s house
If she were there.

Sudden and quick and light as that
The ties snapped,
And he learned about finalities
Afterlife.

The buzz saw roared and shook in the yard
And created dust and dropped pieces of
lumber
Sweet-smelling stuff when the breeze blew across it.
And from there, those who looked up could see
Five mountain ranges lined up one after the other
Under the sunset stretching far into Vermont.
And the saw roared and shook, roared and shook,
As it ran lightly, or had to carry a load.
And nothing happened: day was nearly over.
"Let’s call it a day," I wish they had said
To give the boy the half hour
That means so much to a boy saved from work.
His sister was standing beside them in her apron
To tell them "Dinner." At the word, the saw,
As if to show saws understood what dinner meant,
Jumped at the boy's hand, or seemed to jump—
He must have moved the hand. However it happened,
Neither one pulled back from the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first reaction was a bittersweet laugh.
As he turned toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to prevent
The life from spilling. Then the boy realized everything—
Since he was old enough to know, a big boy
Doing a man's work, even though still a child inside—
He saw everything ruined. "Don't let him cut my hand off—
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So it went. But the hand was already gone.
The doctor put him under anesthesia.
He lay there puffing his lips out with his breath.
And then—the person watching his pulse grew alarmed.
No one believed it. They listened for his heart.
Little—less—nothing!—and that was the end.
Nothing more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one who died, turned to their own affairs.

You’re here to pick me up from work tonight
When dinner’s ready, and we’ll see
If I can stop picking up the white
Soft petals that have fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not just empty, though,
Mixed in with these, smooth beans and wrinkled
peas);
And go with you before you lose sight
Of what you came for and end up like me,
A slave to a springtime love for the earth.
How Love burns through the planting of the seeds
And through the waiting for that early sprout
When, just as the soil gets covered in weeds,
The strong seedling with its arched body comes
Pushing its way through and shaking off the dirt.

The well was dry by the door,
So we took a bucket and a can.
And walked across the fields behind the house
To check if the stream was still flowing;

Not unwilling to have an excuse to go,
Since the autumn evening was pleasant
(Though chilly), since the fields belonged to us,
Our woods were next to the creek.

We ran as if we were going to meet the moon
That was gradually coming up behind the trees,
The bare branches without leaves,
No birds, no breeze.

But once we were in the wood, we stopped
Like gnomes hiding from the moon,
Ready to dash off to a new hiding spot
She laughed when she found us shortly after.

Each of us placed a hand on the other
To listen before we had the courage to look,
And in the silence we created
We heard it; we knew we heard the brook.

A sound coming from a single spot,
A gentle tinkling sound that created
Now drops floating on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver knife.

There was never a sound near the woods except for one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the
ground.
What was it whispering? I didn’t really know myself;
Maybe it was something about the sun’s heat,
Maybe something about the silence—
And that’s why it whispered instead of speaking.
It wasn’t a dream of wasted time,
Or easy riches handed over by a fairy or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed
too weak
For the sincere love that shaped the fields in rows,
Not without delicate spikes of flowers
(Pale orchids), and startled a bright green snake.
The fact is, the sweetest dream that work knows.
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

My long two-pointed ladder is stuck in a tree
Still reaching for the sky,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Next to it, and there might be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick from some branch.
But I’m done with apple-picking now.
The essence of winter sleep is in the night,
The scent of apples: I’m dozing off.
I can’t shake the strange images from my vision
I got from looking through a piece of glass
I skimmed this morning from the trough
And held against the world of frosty grass.
It melted, and I let it drop and shatter.
But I was already
On my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could sense
What kind of dreams were about to come.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every speck of russet showing clearly.
My instep arch not only feels the ache,
It carries the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the branches bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load after load of apples coming in.
Because I’ve had too much
Of apple-picking: I’m exhausted
From the big harvest I wanted myself.
There were countless fruits to touch,
Cradle in my hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That hit the ground,
No matter if not bruised or poked with stubble,
Went straight to the cider-apple pile
As if it were worthless.
You can see what will disturb
This sleep of mine, whatever kind of sleep it is.
If it weren’t gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its approach,
Or just some human sleep.

When I see birches bending left and right
Among the lines of straighter, darker trees,
I like to imagine some boy has been swinging them.
But swinging doesn’t make them stay bent.
Ice storms do that. You’ve probably seen them
Weighted down with ice on a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click against each other
As the breeze picks up, turning different colors
As the agitation cracks and crazes their surface.
Soon the sun warms them enough to shed their crystals
shells
Shattering and cascading onto the snow crust—
Such piles of broken glass to sweep away
You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the dried bracken by the
weight,
And they seem unbroken; though once they are
bent
So low for a long time, they never straighten again:
You can see their trunks arching in the woods
Years later, trailing their leaves on the ground,
Like girls on hands and knees throwing their hair
Over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her straightforward facts about the ice storm,
I’d rather have some boy bend them
As he came and went to fetch the cows—
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could have fun alone.
One by one, he conquered his father’s trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he loosened them up,
And not one remained stiff, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned everything there was
To know about not launching out too soon
And not bringing the tree down
All the way to the ground. He always kept his balance
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same care you’d take to fill a cup
To the rim, and even above the rim.
Then he would leap outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
I was once a swinger of birches myself.
And I dream of going back to that.
It's when I'm tired of all this thinking,
And life feels too much like a pathless woods
Where your face burns and itches from cobwebs
Caught across it, and one eye is crying
From a branch that whipped across it open.
I’d like to escape Earth for a bit
And then come back and start over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half-grant what I wish and take me away
Never to return. Earth is the right place for love:
I don’t know where it could go better.
I’d like to leave by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, until the tree could hold me no longer,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be great both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

He caught up to me and pulled me along
With his steady, early-morning pace,
And made five miles on my journey
Feel better than if I had been riding,
A guy with a swaying bag as his load
And half of it wrapped around his hand.
We chatted above the noise
Of the water we walked next to.
And for my sharing where I'd been
And where I lived in the mountains
On my way home, he shared a bit about himself.
He came from higher up in the pass
Where the water from the new-beginning brooks
Is chunks broken off the mountain—
And it looks hopeless enough
To ever turn into soil for grass.
(The way it is will do for moss.)
That’s where he had built his makeshift shack.
It had to be a makeshift shack
Because of the fears of fire and loss
That disturb the sleep of lumber workers:
Nightmares of half the world burned black
And the sun faded yellow in smoke.
We know who comes to town
Bringing berries under the wagon seat,
Or a basket of eggs between their feet;
What this guy carried in a cotton sack
Was gum, the gum from the mountain spruce.
He showed me chunks of the fragrant stuff
Like uncut gems, dull and rough.
It gets to market golden brown;
But turns to pink in your mouth.

I told him this is a nice life
To press your chest against the bark of trees
That all your days are dim beneath,
And reaching up with a small knife,
To free the resin and take it down
And bring it to market whenever you want.

The mountain loomed over the town like a shadow.
I saw so much before I spent a night there:
I realized I missed the stars in the west,
Where its dark shape cut into the sky.
It felt close to me: I sensed it like a wall
That sheltered me from the wind.
Yet between the town and it, I discovered,
When I walked out at dawn to explore,
Fields, a river, and beyond that, more fields.
At the time, the river had receded,
Making a noisy mess on the cobblestones;
But the signs showed what it had done in spring;
Good grassland washed out, and in the grass
Were ridges of sand and driftwood stripped of bark.
I crossed the river and went around the mountain.
There I encountered a man who moved slowly
With white-faced oxen pulling a heavy cart,
It seemed fine to stop him completely.

"What town is this?" I asked.

"This? It's Lunenburg."
Then I realized I was mistaken: the town I stayed in,
Beyond the bridge, wasn’t the one by the mountain,
But only felt its shadowy presence at night.
"Where is your village? Is it far from here?"

"There is no village—just scattered farms.
We had only sixty voters in the last election.
We can't grow much larger; there's not enough space!" He gestured with his goad.
The mountain was there to be pointed at.
Pasture climbed the side a little way,
And then there was a wall of trees with trunks:
After that, only treetops and cliffs
Partially hidden among the leaves.
A dry ravine broke through the branches
Into the pasture.

"That looks like a trail."
Is that the way to the top from here?—
Not for this morning, but another time:
I should be heading back for breakfast now."

"I wouldn’t recommend trying from this side.
There’s no real path, but those who have
Climbed it, I hear, went up from Ladd's.
That’s five miles back. You can't miss it:
They logged it last winter partway up.
I’d take you, but I’m headed the other way."

"You’ve never climbed it?"

"I've been on the sidelines"
Hunting deer and fishing for trout. There’s a brook
That starts somewhere on it—I’ve heard
Right at the very top—a curious thing.
But what you might find interesting about the brook,
It's always cold in summer, warm in winter.
One of the great sights is to see
It steam in winter like an ox’s breath.
Until the bushes all along its banks
Are covered in icy spines and bristles—
You know the type. Then let the sun shine on it!"

"There ought to be a view of the world
From such a mountain—unless it’s wooded
All the way to the top." I saw through leafy screens
Great granite ledges in sunlight and shadow,
Shelves one could rest a knee on climbing up—
With sheer drops a hundred feet behind;
Or turn and sit and look out and down,
With little ferns in crevices at your side.

"About that, I can’t say. But there’s a spring,
Right on the summit, almost like a fountain.
That should be worth seeing."

"If it’s real."
"Have you ever seen it?"

"I guess there’s no doubt."
About it being there. I’ve never seen it.
It doesn’t have to be right at the very top:
It wouldn’t take much of a drop
To have some water feeding it from above,
And being a good distance down might go unnoticed
By anyone who climbed a long way up.
Once, I asked someone climbing it
To check and tell me later how it was."

"What did he say?"

"He said there was a lake __A_TAG_PLACEHOLDER_0__."
Somewhere in Ireland on a mountaintop."

"But a lake is different. What about the spring?"

"He never got high enough to see.
That’s why I don’t recommend trying this side.
He attempted this side. I always meant to go
And check myself, but you know how it is:
It doesn’t seem like much to climb a mountain
When you’ve been walking around its base all your life.
What would I do? Go in my overalls,
With a big stick, just like when the cows
Don’t come down for milking time?
Or with a shotgun for a stray black bear?
It wouldn’t feel real to climb just for the sake of climbing."

"I wouldn’t climb it if I didn’t want to—
Not just for the experience. What’s its name?"

"We call it Hor: I’m not sure if that’s correct."

"Can you walk around it? Would it be too far?"

"You can drive around and stay in Lunenburg,
But it’s still quite a trek,
The boundary lines are really close to it.
Hor is the township, and the township’s Hor—
And a few houses scattered around the base,
Like boulders fallen off the upper cliff,
Rolled out a bit farther than the rest."

"Warm in December, cold in June, you say?"

"I don’t think the waters have changed much.
You and I know it’s warm
Compared to cold, and cold compared to warm.
But the fun is in how you say things."

"You’ve lived here your whole life?"

Ever since Hor
Was no bigger than a——" What, I didn’t catch.
He gently urged the oxen forward with light touches
Of his slim goad on their noses and flanks,
Gave them their marching orders, and started moving.

I went to turn the grass once after someone
Who mowed it in the morning dew before the sun.

The dew that made his blade so sharp was gone
Before I arrived to see the smooth scene.

I looked for him behind a stand of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all cut,
And I had to be, like he had been—alone,

"As everyone must be," I said to myself,
"Whether they work together or apart."

But as I said it, a bewildered butterfly
Passed by me quickly on silent wings,

Searching with memories faded from the night
For some favorite flower from yesterday's joy.

And I once saw it fly in circles,
As if looking for a flower wilting on the ground.

Then it flew as far as I could see,
And on shaky wings came back to me.

I thought of questions that don't have answers,
And was about to turn to toss the grass to dry;

But it turned first, leading my gaze to look
At a tall bunch of flowers by a brook,

A burst of blooms the scythe had spared
Next to a reedy stream the scythe had revealed.

I left my spot to learn their names,
And found out they were butterfly weed when I got there.

The mower in the dew had loved them this way,
Leaving them to thrive, not for us,

Nor to make us think of him.
But for pure morning joy at the start.

The butterfly and I had found,
Nonetheless, a message from the dawn.

That made me hear the waking birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So from then on, I didn’t work alone;

But happy with him, I worked as if with his help,
And tired, sought shade at noon with him;

And dreaming, as if, shared thoughts
With one whose mind I had never hoped to reach.

"People work together," I told him sincerely,
"Whether they work together or apart."

Something doesn't like a wall,
That sends the frozen ground swelling underneath,
And knocks the upper boulders into the sun;
And creates gaps that even two can pass side by side.
The work of hunters is different:
I've come after them and made repairs
Where they left not one stone on another,
But they would chase the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the barking dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen or heard them being made,
But at spring fixing time, we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day, we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
Each of us takes the boulders that have fallen to us.
Some are loaves, and some are almost balls,
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers raw from handling them.
Oh, it’s just another kind of outdoor game,
One on each side. It doesn't amount to much:
There, where it is, we don’t need the wall:
He has all pine trees, and I have an apple orchard.
My apple trees will never cross over
And eat the pine cones under his pines, I tell him.
He just says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring makes me mischievous, and I wonder
If I could put a thought in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here, there are no cows.
Before I built a wall, I’d want to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I might give offense.
Something doesn’t like a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it’s not exactly elves, and I’d rather
He figured it out for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone firmly held by the top
In each hand, like an old stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness, as it seems to me,
Not just of woods and the shade of trees.
He won’t go beyond his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so much
He repeats, "Good fences make good
neighbors.

Once on a day people call a "weather breeder,"
When the heat makes everything hazy and the sun
Seems to be wearing itself out,
I was partway through, partway climbing
A cedar swamp. Stuffed with cedar oil
And plant debris, feeling exhausted and overheated,
And regretting ever leaving the familiar road,
I paused and rested on a sort of hook
That grabbed my coat as if it were a seat,
And since there was no other way to look,
I looked up toward heaven, and there against the
blue
Stood above me a revived tree,
A tree that had fallen and been raised again—
A barkless ghost. It had paused too,
As if afraid to step on me.
I noticed the strange position of its hands—
Up at its shoulders, dragging yellow strands
Of wire with something in it from one person to another.
"You here?" I said. "Where aren't you these days?
And what's the news you bring—if you have any?
And where are you headed—Montreal?
Me? I'm not heading anywhere at all.
Sometimes I wander off the beaten path
Half looking for the orchid Calypso."

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day
I paused and said, "I’ll turn back from here.
No, I’ll go on farther—and we’ll see."
The hard snow held me, except where now and then
One foot sank through. The view was just lines
Straight up and down of tall skinny trees
Too similar to mark or name a place by
So I could say for sure I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew ahead of me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he landed,
And said nothing to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought I was after him for a feather—
The white one in his tail; like someone who takes
Everything said as if it were personal to him.
One sideways flight would have corrected him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without even wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And stacked—and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was definitely older than this year’s cutting,
Or even last year’s or the year before.
The wood was gray and the bark peeling off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound around it like a bundle.
What held it on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on another a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his axe,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

The three stood listening to a fresh gust
Of wind that pressed against the house for a moment,
Swallowed snow, and then blew free again—the Coles
Were dressed, but tousled from a few hours of sleep,
Meserve diminished in the large coat he wore.

Meserve was the first to speak. He gestured backward
Over his shoulder with his pipe, saying,
"You can just see it glancing off the roof,
Making a big swirl upward toward the sky,
Long enough to write down all our names on;
I think I’ll just call my wife and let her know
I’m here—so far—and starting off again.
I’ll call her quietly so that if she’s smart
And has gone to bed, she won’t wake to answer."
He barely rang the bell three times, then listened.
"Well, Lett, still awake? Lett, I’m at Cole's. I’m late.
I called to say Good-night from here
Before I went to say Good-morning there.—
I thought I would.—I know, but, Lett—I know—
I could, but what's the point? The rest won't be
So bad.—Give me an hour for it.—Ho, ho!
Three hours to get here! But that was all uphill;
The rest is downhill.—Why, no, no, not a slog:
They kept their heads and took their time
Like sweethearts, both of them. They're in the barn.—
My dear, I’m coming just the same. I didn’t
Call you to ask you to invite me home.—"
He lingered for some reply she wouldn’t give,
Said it himself at last, "Good-night," and then,
Getting no answer, hung up the phone.
The three stood in the lamplight around the table
With downcast eyes for a moment until he said,
"I’ll just check on the horses."

"Sure, go for it,"
Both the Coles said together. Mrs. Cole
Added: "You can judge better after you’ve looked.—
I want you here with me, Fred. Leave him here,
Brother Meserve. You know how to find your way
Out through the shed."

"I think I know where I'm going,"
I think I know where I can find my name
Carved in the shed to tell me who I am
If it doesn't tell me where I am. I used
To play——"

You take care of your horses and then return.
Fred Cole, you’re going to let him!"

"Well, aren't you?"
How can you help yourself?"

"I called him Bro."
Why did I call him that?"

"It's good enough."
That’s all you ever heard him called around here.
He seems to have dropped his first name."

"Christian enough I’d call that myself.
He didn’t pay any attention, did he? Well, at least
I didn’t use it out of love for him,
God knows. I can't stand the thought of him
With his ten kids all under ten years old.
I hate his miserable little Racker Sect,
All I’ve ever heard of it, which isn’t much.
But that’s not saying——Look, Fred Cole, it’s
12
Isn’t it, now? He’s been here for half an hour.
He said he left the village store at nine.
Three hours to do four miles—a mile an hour
Or not much better. Why, it doesn’t seem
Like a man could move that slow and still move.
Try to think what he did with all that time.
And three miles more to go!"

Don't let him leave.
Stick to him, Helen. Make him talk to you.
That kind of man talks straight on all his life
From the last thing he said himself, stone deaf
To anything anyone else wants to say.
I should have thought, though, you could make him
hear you."

"What is he doing out on a night like this?
Why can’t he stay home?"

"He had to speak."

"It’s no night to be out."

"He's probably small,
He may be good, but one thing’s for sure, he’s tough."

"And strong on stale tobacco."

"He'll get through this."

"You only say that. There’s not another house
Or shelter to get into from this place
To theirs. I’m going to call his wife again."

"Wait and he may. Let’s see what he’ll do.
Let’s see if he’ll think of her again.
But then I doubt he’s thinking of himself.
He doesn’t look on it as anything."

"He shouldn’t go—there!"

"It's a night, my dear."

"One thing: he’s dragging God into it."

"He doesn’t see it as a case for God."

"You think so, do you? You don’t know the kind.
He’s cooking up a miracle this minute.
Privately—to himself, right now, he’s thinking
He’ll make a case of it if he succeeds,
But keep quiet if he fails."

"Stay quiet all around.
He’ll be dead—dead and buried."

"What a nuisance!
Not that I don’t have every reason not to care
What happens to him if it just takes
Some of the self-righteous pride
Out of those pious troublemakers."

"That’s nonsense! You want to see him okay."

"You like the little guy."

"Don’t you a little?"

"Well,
I don’t like what he’s doing, which is what
You like, and like him for."

"Oh, yes, you do.
You enjoy your fun just like anyone;
Only you women have to pretend like this
To impress men. You’ve made us so ashamed
Of being men we can’t watch a good fight
Between two boys without feeling we have to break it up.
Let the guy lose an ear or two, I say.—
He’s here. I leave him all to you. Go in
And save his life.—All right, come in, Meserve
Have a seat, take a seat. How did you find the horses?"

"Fine, fine."

"And ready for more? My wife here
Says it won’t work. You’ve got to give it up."

"Won't you please me? Please! If I say please?
Mr. Meserve, I’ll leave it to your wife.
What did your wife say on the phone?"

Meserve seemed to notice nothing but the lamp
Or something close to it on the table.
Straightening and lifting a finger,
He pointed with his hand from where it lay
Like a crumpled white spider on his knee:
"That leaf there in your open book! It moved
Just then, I thought. It’s been standing upright like that,
There on the table, ever since I came,
Trying to turn itself backward or forward,
I’ve kept my eye on it to figure out which;
If forward, then it’s with a friend’s impatience—
You see I know—to get you onto things
It wants to see how you will respond, if backward
It’s from regret for something you’ve passed
And failed to appreciate. Never mind,
Things have to expect to show themselves
Many times—I wouldn’t say just how many—
That varies with the things—before we see them.
One of the lies suggests that nothing
Ever presents itself to us twice.
Where would we be at last if that were true?
Our very lives depend on everything’s
Recurring until we respond from within.
The thousandth time might prove the charm.—That
leaf!
It can’t turn either way. It needs the wind's help.
But the wind didn't move it if it did move.
It moved itself. The wind's useless in here.
It couldn’t stir something as delicately balanced
As that. It couldn’t reach the lamp
To get a puff of black smoke from the flame,
Or ruffle the fur on the collie.
You create a little square block of air,
Quiet and light and warm, despite all
The endless dark and cold and storm,
And by doing so give these three, lamp, dog,
And book-leaf, that stay close to you, their peace;
Though for all anyone can tell, peace
May be the one thing you don’t have, yet you give it.
So false it is that what we don’t have we can’t share;
So false, that what we keep saying is true.
I’ll have to turn the leaf if no one else will.
It won’t lie down. Then let it stand. Who cares?"

"I shouldn’t want to rush you, Meserve,
But if you’re going—Say you’ll stay, you know?
But let me pull back this curtain on a scene,
And show you how it’s piling up against you.
You see the snow-white through the frost white?
Ask Helen how far up the sash it’s climbed
Since we last read the gauge."

"It looks as if
Some pale thing had squashed its features flat
And its eyes shut with eagerness
To see what people find so interesting
In one another, and had gone to sleep
From its own stupidity,
Or broken its white neck of mushroom stuff
Short off, and died against the window-pane."

"Brother Meserve, be careful, you’ll scare yourself
More than you will us with such nightmare talk.
It’s you it matters to, because it’s you
Who have to go out into it alone."

"Let him talk, Helen, and maybe he’ll stay."

"Before you drop the curtain—I remember:
You remember the boy who came out here
To breathe the air one winter—had a room
Down at the Averys'? Well, one sunny morning
After a soft storm, he passed our place
And found me banking up the house with snow.
And I was burrowing deep for warmth,
Piling it well above the window sills.
The snow against the window caught his eye.
'Hey, that’s a pretty thought'—those were his
words.
'So you can think it’s six feet deep outside,
While you sit warm and read balanced rations.
You can’t get too much winter in the winter.'
Those were his words. And he went home and
almost
Banked the daylight out of Avery’s windows.
Now you and I wouldn't go to such lengths.
At the same time you can’t deny it makes
It not a bit worse sitting here, the three of us,
Playing our fancy, to have the snowline run
So high across the pane outside. There where
There’s a sort of tunnel in the frost
More like a tunnel than a hole—way down
At the far end of it you see a stir
And quiver like the frayed edge of the drift
Blown in the wind. I like that—I like that.
Well, now I leave you, folks."

"Come on, Meserve,
We thought you were deciding not to go—
The ways you found to praise comfort
And being where you are. You want to stay."

"I’ll admit it’s cold for such a fall of snow.
This house is frozen solid, all except
This room you’re sitting in. If you think the wind
Sounds further off, it’s not because it’s dying;
You’re further under in the snow—that’s all—
And feel it less. Hear the soft bombs of dust
It bursts against us at the chimney mouth,
And at the eaves. I like it from inside
More than I will out in it. But the horses
Are rested and it’s time to say good-night,
And let you get to bed again. Good-night,
Sorry I had to interrupt your sleep."

"You're lucky for doing so. Lucky for you
You had us as a halfway station
To stop at. If you were the type of man
Who paid attention to women, you’d take my advice
And for your family’s sake, stay where you are.
But what’s the use of me saying it over and over?
You’ve done more than you had a right to think
You could do—now. You know the risk you’re taking
In going on."

"Our snowstorms as a rule
Aren’t thought of as life-threatening, and although
I’d rather be the creature that sleeps soundly
Under it all, their door sealed up and lost,
Than the man struggling to keep above it,
Yet think of the small birds roosting and not
In nests. Shall I be counted less than they are?
Their bulk in water would turn solid rock
In no time out tonight. And yet tomorrow
They’ll come flitting between tree branches
Flapping their wings and saying Chickadee,
As if not knowing what you meant by the word
storm."

"But why would you go on when nobody wants you to?
Your wife—she doesn’t want you to. We don’t,
And you yourself don’t want to. Who else is there?"

"Save us from being cornered by a woman.
Well, there’s"—She told Fred afterward that in
The pause right there, she thought the dreaded word
Was coming, "God." But no, he only said
"Well, there’s—the storm. That says I must go on.
That wants me as a war would if it came.
Ask any man."

He threw her that as something
To hold her until he got outside the door.

He had Cole with him to the barn to see him off.
When Cole returned he found his wife still standing
Beside the table near the open book,
Not reading it.

"So, what kind of man
Do you call that?" she said.

"He had the gift
Of words, or should I say tongues?"

"Was there ever such a man for seeing similarities?"
"Or ignoring polite social questions—
What? We found out in one hour more about
him
Than we had seeing him pass by in the road
A thousand times. If that’s how he preaches!
You didn’t think you’d keep him after all.
Oh, I’m not blaming you. He didn’t leave you
Much say in the matter, and I’m just as glad
We’re not in for a night of him. No sleep
If he had stayed. The slightest thing set him off.
It’s quiet as an empty church without him."

"But how much better off are we as it is?
We’ll have to sit here until we know he’s safe."

"Yes, I suppose you’ll want to, but I wouldn’t.
He knows what he can do, or he wouldn’t try.
Get into bed, I say, and get some rest.
He won’t come back, and if he calls,
It won’t be for an hour or two."

"Well then
We can’t be any help by sitting here
And living his struggle through with him, I guess.

Understood! Please provide the text you'd like me to modernize.

Cole had been calling in the dark.
Mrs. Cole's voice came from another room:
"Did she call you, or did you call her?"

"She texted me."
"You'd better get dressed; you won't be able to go back to bed.
We must have been asleep; it’s after three."

"Did she ring for a long time? I’ll grab my robe.
I want to talk to her."

"All she said was,"
He hadn’t come, and did he really leave."

"She knew he had, poor thing, two hours ago.

"He had the shovel. He must have put up a fight."

"Why did I ever let him leave this house!"

"Don’t start that. You did your best
To keep him here—though maybe you didn’t really
Hide your wish to see him have the courage
To disobey you. Much thanks that will be from his wife."

"Fred, after all I said! You can’t make it out
As anything but what it was.
Did she show in any word she said
That she didn’t appreciate me?"

"When I said 'Gone,'"
'Well then,' she said, and 'Well then'—like a
threat.
Then her voice slowly scraped out: 'Oh, you,
Why did you let him go'?"

"Asked why we allowed him?"
You let me here. I'll ask her why she let him.
She didn’t dare to talk when he was here.
Their number is—twenty-one? The thing won’t
work.
Someone's receiver is down. The handle gets stuck.
The stubborn thing, the way it jars your arm!
It’s theirs. She’s dropped it from her hand and
gone.

"Try talking. Say 'Hello'!"

"Hi there."

"What do you hear?"

"I hear a quiet room—
You know—it sounds that way. And yes, I think—I hear a clock and windows rattling.
No footsteps though. If she’s there, she’s sitting down."

"Shout, she may hear you."

"Yelling won’t solve anything."

"Keep talking then."

Hello. Hello. Hello.
You don’t suppose—? She wouldn’t go outside?"

"I'm half afraid that’s exactly what she might do."

"And leave the kids?"

Try again later.
You can’t tell if she’s left the door
Wide open and the wind blew out the lamp
And the fire’s gone out and the room’s dark and cold?"

"It’s one of two things: either she’s gone to bed
Or she’s gone outside."

"In that case, both are lost."
Do you know what she’s like? Have you ever met
her?
It’s odd she doesn’t want to talk to us."

"Fred, see if you can hear what I hear. Come here."

"Maybe a clock."

"Don’t you hear anything else?"

"Not talking."

"No."

"Yes, I hear you—what's going on?"

"What do you think it is?"

"A baby is crying!"
It sounds frantic, though muffled and distant."

"Its mother wouldn’t let it cry like that,
Not if she’s there."

"What do you think it means?"

"There's only one thing it could mean,
That is, if we assume—that she has gone out.
Of course she hasn’t though." They both sat down
Feeling helpless. "There’s nothing we can do until
morning.

"Fred, I won’t let you think about going out."

"Wait." The double bell began to ring.
They jumped up. Fred grabbed the telephone.
"Hello, Meserve. You’re there, then!—And your
partner?

Good! I was asking—she didn’t seem to respond.
He says she went to let him into the barn.—
We’re relieved. Oh, let’s not talk about it, man.
Drop by and see us when you’re passing."

"Okay."
"So she has him, though what she wants him for
I don’t understand."

"Maybe not for herself."
Perhaps she only wants him for the kids."

"The whole fuss seems to have been for nothing.
What ruined our night was just his fun.
What did he come in for?—To talk and visit?
Thought he’d just call to tell us it was snowing.
If he thinks he’s going to turn our house
Into a halfway coffee shop between town and
nowhere

"I thought you’d feel you were too worried."

"You think you haven’t been worried yourself."

"If you mean he was inconsiderate
To drag us out to think for him at midnight
And then take our advice as if it meant nothing,
Then I agree with you. But let’s forgive him.
We’ve had a part in one night of his life.
What will you bet he ever calls again?"

She stood by the kitchen sink, looking
Out through a dusty window
At the tall weeds nourished by the sink's water.
She wore her cape; her hat was in her hand.
Behind her, the room was chaotic,
With chairs turned upside down, making them look like people
Sitting in other chairs, and something, just to look,
For each room a house has—parlor, bedroom,
And dining room—all jumbled together in the kitchen.
Now and then, a smudged face
Peered in a door behind her and spoke
To her back. She always responded without turning.

"Where should I put this walnut bureau, lady?"

"Place it on top of something that's already on top
Of something else," she laughed. "Just put it down
Wherever you can tonight and go. It’s almost dark;
You should be heading back to town."
Another dark face peeked in and smiled,
And when she didn’t turn, spoke
softly,
"What are you looking at out the window, lady?"

"Never have I been called 'lady' so often.
I wonder if being called 'lady'
So many times would make me a lady
In common law."

"But I'm asking,
What do you see out the window, lady?"

"What I’ll be seeing more of in the years
To come as I stand here and circle around
With lots of plates and towels many times."

"And what does that mean? You’re just avoiding me."

"Weeds that thrive on the water from the dishpan
More than some women like the dishpan, Joe;
A little stretch of mowed field for you;
Not much more until I reach the woods
That seem to disappear altogether. And it’s hardly enough to call
A view."

"And still you think you like it, dear?"

"That's what you’re so eager to know! You
Hope I like it. There goes something big up
There upstairs. The very footsteps of men
As heavy as they are shaking the frame
Of such a small house. Once we’re alone,
You and I, dear, we’ll walk more softly
Up and down the stairs and through the rooms, and
No one
But sudden winds that snatch things from our hands
Will ever slam the doors."

"I think you see
More than you’ll admit to out that window."

"No; besides the things I’ve mentioned,
I only see the years. They come and go
Alternating with the weeds, the field,
The woods."

"What kind of years?"

"Why, later years—

Different from early years."

"I see them too."

"You didn’t count them?"

"No, the further off
They blend together so I didn’t bother.
It’s unlikely they’d be in numbers
We'd care to know, since we're not young now.
And there goes something else up there.
It sounds like the men are leaving,
And every crash means one less to return
To the lit city streets we, too, have known,
But now are giving up for country darkness."

"Step away from that window where you see too much
for me,
And take a livelier view of things from here.
They’re leaving. Watch this strong guy climbing up
Over the wheel into the high seat,
Lighting his pipe now, squinting at the flame
Burning as he inhales."

"See how it lights up his nostril, proving
How dark it’s getting. Can you tell what time
It is by that? Or by the moon? The new moon!
What shoulder did I see her over? None.
She’s a silver wire, as new as we
To everything. Her light won’t last us long.
But it’s something to know we’ll be
having her
Night after night and growing brighter every night
To help us through our first two weeks. But, Joe,
The stove! Before they go! Knock on the window;
Ask them to help you get it upright.
We’re just standing here dreaming. Hurry! Call them back!"

"They’re not gone yet."

"We need the stove,
Whatever else we want. And a light.
Do we have a piece of candle if the lamp
And oil are packed away?"

Again
The house was full of footsteps, and the dark,
Door-filling men rushed in and grabbed the stove.
They placed it precisely by eye in a hole in the wall;
Then they lifted up the disassembled stovepipe,
So light and airy for their strength
It almost seemed to float up,
Slipping from their clumsy grasp toward the ceiling.
"A perfect fit!" said one, banging his shoulder on a stovepipe.
"It’s good luck to start with a good stovepipe
When you move in. Don’t worry,
It’s not so bad in the country once you settle down,
When people are moving ahead in life. You’ll like it."
Joe said: "You big guys should find a farm,
And become good farmers, leaving the city work
For others to handle. There’s not enough
For everyone as it stands in there."
"God!" one exclaimed wildly, and, when no one replied:
"Tell that to Jimmy here. He needs a farm."
But Jimmy just made his jaw drop
Foolishly, and rolled his eyes as if to say
He saw himself as a farmer. Then there was a French
boy
Who said with a seriousness that made them laugh,
"My friend, you don’t know what you’re asking."
He took off his cap and held it with both hands
Across his chest to bow:
"We’re giving you our chances on the farm."
And then they all turned with loud boots
And pushed each other out of the house.
"Goodbye to them! We confuse them. They think—
I don’t know what they think we see in what
They leave us to: that pasture slope that seems
The backside of some farm presented to us; and your woods
To the north from your window by the sink,
Waiting to move on us whenever
We drop our gaze or turn to other things,
Like in the game 'Ten-step' that children play."

"They seemed like good boys, and let them love the city.
All they could do was say 'God!' when you suggested
They come out and be useful farmers."

"Did they leave something lonely in you?
It would take more than them to sicken you—
Us of our agreement. But they left us feeling
As if we were fools beyond reasoning.
They almost disturbed me."

"It's all so much
What we have always wanted, I admit
The bad feeling for a moment makes it seem
Even worse, and so on down, down, down.
It’s nothing; it’s just their leaving us in the dark.
I never handle it well when people leave.
The first night after guests are gone, the house
Feels haunted or exposed. I always take
A personal interest in locking up
At bedtime; but the strangeness soon fades."
He grabbed a dirty lantern from behind
A door. "At least we didn’t lose this! And these!"
He pulled out some matches from his pocket. "For food—
The meals we’ve had no one can take away from us.
I wish everything on earth were just
As certain as the meals we've enjoyed. I wish
The meals we haven’t had were too, at least.
What do you have that you know where to find
it?"

"The bread we bought while passing the store.
There’s butter somewhere too."

"Let’s tear the bread.
I’ll start the fire to keep you company;
You won’t have any other company
Until Ed begins to come out on Sundays
To check on us and give us his thoughts
On what needs trimming, shingling, or breaking up.
He'll know what he would do if he were us,
And do it all at once. He’ll plan for us and plan
To help us, but he’ll just do it all in planning.
Well, you can set the table with the loaf.
Let’s see you find the loaf. I’ll light the fire.
I like chairs stacked on other chairs
Not offering a lady—"

"There you go again, Joe!
You’re tired."

"I’m tired and foolishly worn out;
Don’t mind a word I say. It’s a full day’s work
To empty one house of all its goods
And fill another with them fifteen miles away,
Even if you’re just dumping them down."

"Dumped down in paradise we are and happy."

"It’s everything I've always wanted,
I can’t believe it’s what you wanted too."

"Shouldn’t you want to know?"

"I’d like to know
If this is what you wanted, then how much
You wanted it for me."

"A troubled conscience!
You don’t want me to tell unless I know."

"I don’t want to find out what can’t be known.
But who first said the word to come?"

"My dear,
It’s who first thought the thought. You’re
Searching, Joe,
For things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings.
Ends and beginnings—there are no such things.
There are only middles."

"What is this?"

"This life?
Us sitting here by lantern-light together
Amid the remnants of a former home?
You can’t deny the lantern isn’t new.
The stove isn’t either, and neither am I to you,
Nor you to me."

"Maybe you never were?"

"It would take me forever to list
All that’s not new in where we are.
New is a term for fools in towns who believe
Styles in dress and thoughts must eventually
Lead somewhere. I’ve heard you say that.
No, this is no beginning."

"Then an end?"

"End is a depressing word."

"Is it too late
To drag you out for just a goodnight stroll
To the old peach trees on the knoll to feel
By starlight in the grass for a last peach
The neighbors probably didn’t take as their right
When the house was empty? I’ve been checking:
I doubt they left us many grapes.
Before we set about making the house right,
The first thing in the morning, let’s go
To check on the apple, cherry, peach,
Pine, alder, pasture, mowing, well, and brook.
It’s all part of a farm."

"I know this much:
I’m going to put you in your bed, if I have to
Make you build it. Come, get the light."

When there was no more lantern in the kitchen,
The fire escaped through cracks in the stove
And danced in yellow flickers on the ceiling,
As if right at home as if they’d always danced there.

Two paths split in a yellow forest,
And I regretted that I couldn’t take both
And be one traveler; I stood for a long time
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it curved into the bushes;

Then I chose the other, just as nice,
And maybe it had the better claim,
Because it was grassy and less worn;
Though honestly the traffic there
Had really worn them about the same,

And both that morning were equally covered
In leaves that no one had stepped on yet.
Oh, I saved the first for another day!
But knowing how one path leads to another,
I doubted I would ever come back.

I will be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere far in the future:
Two paths diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

There’s a singer everyone knows,
Loud, a bird of mid-summer, in the woods,
Who makes the sturdy tree trunks echo again.
He says the leaves are old and for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one is to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is over
When the pear and cherry blossoms fell like rain
On sunny days, briefly clouded over;
And then comes that other fall we call fall.
He says the highway dust covers everything.
The bird could stop and be like other birds
But he knows in singing not to sing.
The question he poses in almost words
Is what to do with something that’s lost its worth.

If I get tired of trees and want to be around people again,
I know exactly where to go in the morning,
To a hill where the cows eat the grass.
There, lying back among the juniper,
Hidden from view, I can see clearly in white
The distant homes of people, and even further away, __A_TAG_PLACEHOLDER_0__,
The graves of people on a hill over there,
Whether living or dead, whichever comes to mind.
And if by noon I've had enough of all this,
I just have to turn onto my side, and look,
The sun-drenched hillside warms my face.
My breath shakes the tiny flowers like a breeze,
I can smell the earth, and I can smell the crushed plants,
I peer into the ant's little world.

I think about the trees.
Why do we choose to endure
Forever the noise of these
More than any other sound
So close to where we live?
We put up with them all day
Until we lose all sense of pace,
And certainty in our joys,
And develop a listening vibe.
They are what talks about leaving
But never actually goes;
And it talks just as much for knowing,
As it grows wiser and older,
That now it plans to stay.
My feet tug at the floor
And my head tilts to my shoulder
Sometimes when I watch trees sway,
From the window or the door.
I will set out for somewhere,
I will make the bold choice
One day when they are rustling
And swaying enough to scare
The white clouds above them away.
I will have less to say,
But I will be gone.

By June, our brook has run out of song and speed.
Sought after for much longer, it will be found
Either to have gone groping underground
(And taken with it all the Hyla breed
That called out in the mist a month ago,
Like the sound of sleigh bells in a ghost of snow)—
Or it has flourished and come up in jewel-weed,
Weak foliage that is blown and bent
Even against the way its waters flowed.
Its bed is left a faded sheet of paper
Of dead leaves stuck together by the heat—
A brook to none but those who remember long.
This, as you will see, is very different
From brooks referenced elsewhere in song.
We love the things we love for what they are.

My Sorrow, when she’s with me,
Think about these dreary autumn rainy days.
Are as beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, lifeless tree;
She strolls down the muddy pasture path.

Her joy keeps me from staying.
She talks, and I'm excited to listen:
She’s happy the birds have flown away,
She’s happy her simple gray
Is silver now wrapped in a clingy mist.

The bleak, abandoned trees,
The gray ground, the overcast sky,
The beauties she sees so clearly,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And it bothers me for some reason.

Just yesterday I learned to appreciate
The beauty of bare November days
Before the arrival of snow,
But it would be pointless to tell her so,
And they’re better because of her praise.

The battle tore through a cobweb strung with diamonds
And cut a flower next to a ground bird's nest
Before it stained a single human chest.
The wounded flower bent over and hung down.
And still the bird returned to her young.
A butterfly lost its place
And briefly searched the air for its resting flower,
Then gently landed on it and fluttered around.

On the bare hillside pasture, a wheel of thread
Had spread overnight between mullein stalks
And wet cables glimmering with silver dew.
A sudden bullet passed by and shook it dry.
The spider living there ran to greet the fly,
But finding nothing, sullenly pulled back.

O quiet October morning, mild,
Your leaves have ripened for the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it's wild,
Could blow them all away.
The crows are calling above the forest;
Tomorrow, they might gather and go.
O quiet October morning, mild,
Let this day move slowly,
Make it feel less brief for us.
Hearts that aren't averse to being charmed,
Charm us in the way you know;
Release one leaf at dawn;
At noon, release another leaf;
One from our trees, one from afar;
Delay the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with shades of purple.
Slowly, slowly!
For the grapes' sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves are already burnt by frost,
Whose clustered fruit might otherwise be lost—
For the grapes' sake along the wall.

Come with the rain, loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nest-builder;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snowbank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whatever you do tonight,
Bathe my window, let it flow,
Melt it just like ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit's crucifix;
Burst into my little space;
Swing the picture on the wall in place;
Run the rattling pages through;
Scatter poems on the floor too;
Turn the poet out the door.

When a friend calls out to me from the road
And slows his horse to a thoughtful walk,
I don’t just stand still and look around
At all the hills I haven't worked on,
And shout from where I am, What’s up?
No, it’s not the right time to talk.
I stick my hoe in the soft ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And walk: I head up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

There were three people in the meadow by the stream
Gathering up windrows, piling stacks of hay,
With their eyes always looking toward the west
Where a lopsided cloud with a golden edge
Moved ominously with a constant shadow
Flashing across its surface. Suddenly
One worker, thrusting his pitchfork into the ground,
Marched off the field and headed home. One stayed.
The city-bred farmer failed to get it.

"What was wrong?"

"Something you just mentioned."

"What did I say?"

"About us making an effort."

"To stack the hay?—because rain's coming?
I said that over half an hour ago.
I said it to myself just as much as to you."

"You didn't get it. But James is a big fool.
He thought you were criticizing his work.
That's how the typical farmer would interpret it.
James would take time, of course, to think it over
Before he acted: he's only just gotten around to it."

"He's a fool if that's how he takes me."

"Don't let it bother you. You've figured out
something.
A skilled worker won’t be told
To work better or faster—those two things.
I’m just as picky as anyone:
Most likely I would have done the same for you.
But I know you don’t get our ways.
You were just saying what was on your mind,
What was on everyone’s mind, and you weren’t implying anything.

Let me tell you a story about something that happened once:
I was up here in Salem at a guy’s place
Named Sanders with a crew of four or five
Doing the haying. Nobody liked the boss.
He was one of those wiry types called a spider,
With thin arms and legs that sprawled out like
From a humped body about the size of a biscuit.
But work! that man could work, especially
If it meant he could get more from his hired hands. I won’t deny
He was tough on himself. I couldn’t tell
That he kept any set hours—not for himself.
Daylight and lantern-light were all the same to him:
I’ve heard him hammering in the barn all night.
But what he liked was someone to motivate.
Those he couldn’t lead, he’d get behind
And push, just like you do in mowing—
Stay on their heels and threaten to mow their legs
off.
I’d seen enough of his bullying antics
(We call that bullying). I’d been watching him.
So when he paired up with me in the hayfield
To load the hay, I thought, Watch out for trouble.
I built the load and topped it off; old Sanders
Combed it down with a rake and said, 'O. K.'
Everything went smoothly until we reached the barn
With a big load to dump in a bay.
You understand that meant an easy job
For the guy on top throwing down
The hay and rolling it off quickly,
Where on a mow it would have been slow lifting.
You wouldn’t think a guy would need much urging
In those circumstances, would you?
But the old fool grabs his pitchfork in both hands,
And looking up with his beard out of the pit,
Shouts like an army captain, 'Let her come!'
I thought, Really? 'What did you
say?
I asked out loud, so there’d be no mistake,
'Did you say, Let her come?' 'Yes, let her come.'
He said it again, but he said it softer.
Never say something like that to a man,
Not if he has any pride. God, I’d just as soon
Have killed him as leave out his middle name.
I built the load and knew exactly where to find it.
Two or three forkfuls I picked lightly around for
Like I was thinking, and then I just dove in
And dumped the load on him in ten lots.
I looked over the side once in the dust
And caught sight of him struggling like
He was treading water, keeping his head above. 'Damn you,' I said,
'That gets you!' He squeaked like a squished rat.
That was the last I saw or heard from him.
I cleaned out the rack and drove out to cool off.
As I sat wiping hayseed from my neck,
And sort of waiting to be asked about it,
One of the guys shouted, 'Where’s the old man?'
'I left him in the barn under the hay.
If you want him, you can go dig him out.'
They figured from the way I wiped my neck
More than needed something must be off.
They headed for the barn; I stayed where I was.
They told me later. First they forked hay,
A lot of it, out onto the barn floor.
Nothing! They listened for him. Not a sound.
I guess they thought I’d spiked him in the temple
Before I buried him, or I couldn’t have managed.
They dug more. 'Go keep his wife
Out of the barn.' Someone looked in a window,
And darned if he wasn’t in the kitchen
Slumped way down in a chair, with both his feet
Stuck in the oven, the hottest day that summer.
He looked so thoroughly disgusted from behind
That no one dared to stir him up,
Or let him know he was being watched.
Apparently I hadn’t buried him
(I may have knocked him down); but my just
trying
To bury him had hurt his pride.
He had gone to the house so he wouldn’t run into me.
He kept away from us all afternoon.
We took care of his hay. We saw him out
After a while picking peas in his garden:
He couldn’t keep from doing something."

"Weren’t you relieved to find he wasn’t dead?"

"No! and yet I don’t know—it’s hard to say.
I was ready to kill him fair enough."

"You took a clumsy approach. Did he fire
you?
"Fire me? No! He knew I did just fine."

Lancaster had him—such a small town,
Such a big man. It hasn’t seen much of him
Lately, though he still owns the old homestead
And sends the kids down there with their mother
To run wild in the summer—a little wild.
Sometimes he joins them for a day or two
And sees old friends he somehow can't get close to.
They meet him in the general store at night,
Preoccupied with serious mail,
Going through a printed letter while he talks.
They seem nervous. He wouldn't have it this way:
Though he's a great scholar, he's a democrat,
If not at heart, at least in principle.
Recently, when he was coming up to Lancaster,
His train was late, so he missed another train
And had to wait four hours at Woodsville Junction
After eleven o'clock at night. Too tired
To sit through such an ordeal,
He headed to the hotel to find a bed.

"No room," the night clerk said. "Unless——"
Woodsville's a place of screams and wandering lamps
And rattling cars—and one hotel.

"You say 'unless.'"

"Unless you don't mind"
Sharing a room with someone else."

"Who’s there?"

"A man.

"So I hope. What kind of man?"

"I know him: he's fine. A man’s a man.
Separate beds, of course, you understand."

The night clerk blinked and challenged him.
"Who's that man sleeping in the office chair?
Has he refused my chance?"

"He was scared of being robbed or killed.
What do you say?"

"I need a bed."

The night clerk led him up three flights of stairs
And down a narrow hallway full of doors,
At the last one, he knocked and entered,
"Lafe, here's someone wanting to share your
room.

"Show him this way. I'm not scared of him,
I'm not so drunk I can't handle myself."
The night clerk set a bed down at the foot.
"This will be yours. Good night," he said, and
left.

"Lafe was the name, right?"

"Yes, Layfayette.
You got it right the first time. What about you?"

"Magoon."

Doctor Magoon."

"Is this a doctor?"

"Well, a teacher."

"Professor Shape-the-circle-until-you're-tired?
Hold on, there's something I was going to ask
The first person who knew anything I ran into.
I'll ask you later—don't let me forget it."
The Doctor looked at Lafe and looked away.
A man? A brute. Bare above the waist,
He sat there creased and shining in the light,
Fiddling with the buttons on a well-starched shirt.
"I'm moving up to a larger shirt size.
I've been feeling miserable lately; miserable wouldn’t cover it.
I just realized what was wrong tonight:
I've been choking like a seedling tree
When it outgrows the tight band of its name tag.
I blamed it on the heat wave we've been having.
It was just my foolish reluctance,
Not wanting to admit I’d grown a size.
This is number eighteen. What size do you wear?"

The Doctor gulped nervously.
"Oh—ah—fourteen—fourteen."

"Really? Fourteen? You’re kidding!"
I remember when I wore fourteen.
And come to think of it, I must have more than a hundred collars, size fourteen, back at home.
Too bad to waste them all. You should have them.
They're yours, and I’ll send them to
What’s up with you standing on one leg like that? You don’t look any more comfortable than where Kike left you. You act like you wish you hadn’t come. Sit down or lie down, friend; you’re making me nervous. The Doctor cautiously moved toward the bed And propped himself against a pillow. “Not like that, with your shoes on Kike's white bed. You can't rest like that. Let me take your shoes off.” “Don’t touch me, please—I mean it, don’t touch me, please. I won’t let you put me to bed, man.” “Alright then, do it your way. 'My man' is it? You talk like a professor. Speaking of who's scared of who, though, I think I've got more to lose than you if anything goes wrong. Who’s out to cut your number fourteen throat? Let’s show a little good faith. Here’s ninety dollars. Come on, if you’re not scared.” “I’m not scared. I’ve got five: that’s all I carry.” “Can I search you? Where are you headed? Stay still. You'd better tuck your money under you And sleep on it like I always do When I’m with people I don’t trust at night.” “Will you believe me if I put it right there On the bedspread—that I trust you?” “You’d say that, Mister Man. I’m a collector. My ninety isn’t mine—you wouldn’t think so. I collect it a buck at a time All around the country for the Weekly News, Published in Bow. You know the Weekly News?” “Known it since I was a kid.” “Then you know me. Now we’re getting along—talking. I’m kind of important for it at the front. My job is to find what people want: They pay for it, and they should get it. Fairbanks, he tells me—he's the editor— Feel out the public opinion, he says. A lot rests on my shoulders when all's said. The only trouble is we disagree In politics: I’m a Vermont Democrat— You know what that is, pretty set in my ways; The News has always been Republican. Fairbanks says to me, 'Help us this year,' Meaning their ticket. 'No,' I say, 'I can't and won't. You've been in long enough: It's time you turned around and supported us. You’ll have to pay me more than ten a week If you expect me to get Bill Taft elected. I doubt I could even do it anyway.'” "You seem to shape the paper's policy." "You see I know everyone; I know them all. I almost know their farms as well as they do." "You drive around? That must be nice work." "It's work, but I can’t say it’s not fun. What I like most is the way different farms look, Coming into view from a stretch of woods, Or over a hill or around a sudden turn. I like to see folks getting out in spring, Raking their dooryards, working near the house. Later they go further out to the fields. Sometimes everything’s closed up except the barn; The family’s all away in some back meadow. There’s a hayload coming, when it arrives. And later, they all come back: The fields stripped to lawn, the garden patches Stripped to bare ground, the apple trees Reduced to sticks and poles. There’s nobody around. The chimney, though, keeps a good, brisk smoking. And I lie back and ride. I take the reins Only when someone is coming, and the mare Stops when she feels like it: I tell her when to go. I’ve spoiled Jemima in more ways than one. She’s gotten to where she turns in at every house Like she has some sort of curvature, No matter if I don’t have an errand there. She thinks I'm social. I maybe am. It’s rare I get down except for meals, though. People entertain me from the kitchen doorstep, All in a family line down to the youngest." "One might think they wouldn’t be as glad To see you as you are to see them." "Oh, because I want their dollar. I don’t want Anything they don’t have. I never harass. I’m there, and they can pay me if they want. I don’t go anywhere on purpose: I just happen by. Sorry there’s no cup to give you a drink. I drink straight from the bottle—not your style. May I offer you——?" “No, no, no, thank you.” “Just as you say. Here’s looking at you then.— And now I’m leaving you for a bit. You’ll rest easier when I’m gone, maybe— Lie down—let yourself go and get some sleep. But first—let's see—what was I going to ask you? Those collars—who should I send them to, In case you’re not awake when I come back?" “Honestly, friend, I can't let you. You may need them.” “Not until I shrink, when they’ll be out of style.” “But really—I have so many collars.” “I don’t know who I’d rather have take them. They’re just turning yellow where they are. But you’re the doctor as they say. I’ll turn out the light. Don’t wait for me: I’ve just begun the night. You get some sleep. I'll knock like this and peek around the door When I come back so you’ll know it’s me. There’s nothing I’m afraid of like scared people. I don’t want you to shoot me in the head. What am I doing taking this bottle with me? There now, you get some sleep.” He shut the door. The Doctor slid a little down the pillow.

"You really should have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture today:
Blueberries as big as the tip of your thumb,
Bright sky-blue, heavy, ready to thrum
In the deep pail of whoever got there first!
And all ripe together—none of them green
And some of them ripe! You should have seen!"

"I don't know what part of the pasture you mean."

"You know where they cleared the woods—let me
consider—
It was two years ago—or no!—could it be
No longer than that?—and the next fall
The fire ran through and burned it all but the wall."

"Well, there hasn't been enough time for the bushes to
expand.
That's always how it is with blueberries, though:
There might not have been a single sign
Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,
But take the pine out, and you could burn
The pasture all over until not a fern
Or blade of grass is left, not to mention a stick,
And suddenly they're all around you as thick
And confusing as a magician's trick."

"It must be in the charcoal they grow their fruit.
Sometimes I taste a hint of soot in them.

And really they're ebony-skinned:
The blue is just a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that disappears with just a touch,
And less than the tan with which pickers are
tanned.

"Do you think Mortenson knows what he has?"

"He might, but he might not care and just let the chewink
Gather them for him—you know what he's like.
He wouldn't use the fact that they're rightfully his
As an excuse to keep us other folks out."

"I wonder why you didn't see Loren around."

"The best part was that I did. You know,
I was just finishing up in the field
And crossing over the wall and into the road,
When who should come by, with a car full
Of all the young, chattering Lorens alive,
But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive."

"He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he
scowl?

"He kept nodding his head up and down.
You know how politely he always passes by.
But he had a big thought—I could tell by his
check it out—
Which, if expressed, might sound like this:
'I suspect I've left those berries to ripen too long.
I'm really to blame.'"

"He's thriftier than some people I could name."

"He seems to be thrifty; and hasn’t he got a reason,
With all those young Lorens to feed?
He’s raised them all on wild berries, they
speak,
Just like birds. They store away a lot.
They eat them all year, and those they
don't eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet."

"Who cares what they say? It’s a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow."

"I wish you had seen his constant bow—
And the look of the kids! Not one of them
turned,
And they looked so serious—absurdly worried."

"I wish I knew half of what they all know
About where all the berries and other things grow,
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they
will ripen.
I met them one day, and each had a flower
Stuck into his berries, as fresh as after a shower;
Some strange kind—they told me it didn't have a name."

"I've told you how once, not long after we arrived,
I almost made poor Loren laugh
By asking him, of all people on earth,
If he knew of any fruit we could pick.
The rascal said he'd be happy
To share if he knew. But the year had been bad.
There had been some berries—but they were all
gone.
He didn’t say where they had been. He continued:
'I'm sure—I'm sure'—as polite as can be.
He spoke to his wife at the door, 'Let me see,
Marne, do we know any good berry-picking spot?'
It was all he could do to keep a straight face."

"If he thinks all the wild fruit belongs to him,
He'll find he's wrong. Just for fun,
We'll pick in Mortenson's pasture this year.
We'll go in the morning, that is, if it’s clear,
And the sun shines warm: the vines must be
damp.
It's been so long since I picked I almost forget
How we used to pick berries: we'd take one look
around,
Then sink out of sight like trolls underground,
And see nothing more of each other, or hear,
Unless you said I was scaring a bird
Away from its nest, and I said it was you.
'Well, one of us is.' For complaining, it flew
Around and around us. And then for a while
We picked, till I worried you had wandered away,
And I thought I lost you. I raised a shout
Too loud for how far away you were, it turned out,
For when you replied, your voice was as quiet
As talking—you stood right beside me, you know."

"We won’t have the place to ourselves to enjoy—
Not likely, when all the young Lorens show up.
They'll be there tomorrow, or even tonight.
They won’t be too friendly—they might be polite—
To folks they see as lacking the right
To pick where they’re picking. But we won’t
complain.
You should have seen how it looked in the rain,
The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,
Like two kinds of jewels, a sight for thieves."

Brown lived at such a high farm
That everyone for miles could see
His lantern when he did his chores
In winter after 3:30.

And many must have seen him make
His reckless fall from there one night,
Crossing fields, walls, everything,
Making circles of lantern light.

Between the house and barn the wind
Caught him by something he was wearing
And blew him out onto the icy crust
That covered the world, and he disappeared!

Walls were all buried, trees were few:
He saw no support unless he fought back.
A hole in somewhere with his heel.
But even though he tried repeatedly

And stamped and talked to himself,
And sometimes it felt like something was about to break,
He gained no footing, but pursued
His journey from one field to another.

Sometimes he came with arms outspread
Like wings, twirling in the scene
Upon his longer axis, and
With great dignity,

Faster or slower depending,
He could sit or stand however he wanted,
According to whether he feared to risk
He wanted to protect his neck and keep his clothes safe,

He never let the lantern drop.
And some exclaimed when they saw from a distance.
The shapes he created with it,
"I’m curious about what those signals mean."

Brown makes at this time of night!
He's celebrating something unusual.
I wonder if he's sold his farm,
"Or have been appointed the Master of the Grange."

He wobbled, he lurched, he bobbed, he paused;
He fell and made the lantern shake.
(But kept the light from going out).
So halfway down, he fought the battle.

Disbelieving his own bad luck.
And then embracing it all
He gave in
And came down like a kid sliding.

"Well—I—be——" that was all he said,
As I stand on the icy road,
He looked back up the slippery slope
It was two miles to his home.

Sometimes as an authority
When it comes to cars, people ask me if I
Should say our resources are dwindled,
Here’s my honest response:

Yankees are what they always were.
Don't think Brown ever gave up hope.
Of getting home again because
He couldn't climb that slippery slope.

Or even thought of waiting there
Until the January thaw
Should take the shine off the ice.
He gracefully submitted to natural law,

And then went around it on his feet,
In the way of our kind;
Not overly concerned for those who,
At that time of day,

It must have seemed as if the path
He was actually leaving.
From where he was trying to go—
I don’t care about them, I say.

But now he blinked his eyes three times;
Then he shook his lantern, saying, "Ile's
'Bout out!" and took the long way home
It's a matter of several miles by road.

We create a separate space for ourselves
With playful words that tease and poke fun,
But oh, the restless heart
Until someone actually finds us.

It's a shame if the situation demands
(Or so we say) that in the end
We say the plain truth to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But this is true for everyone, from kids that play
At hide-and-seek with God above,
So all who hide too well away
They must speak and let us know where they are.

When the wind is against us in the dark,
And throws snow
Against the lower chamber window on the east,
And murmurs like a stifled bark,
The beast,
"Come out! Come out!"—
It doesn't take any inner struggle not to go,
Ah, do!
I count our strength,
Two and a child,
Those of us not asleep are quiet, noticing
How the cold creeps in as the fire eventually dies,—
How the drifts pile up,
Dooryard and road are unplowed,
Until even the comforting barn feels far away,
And my heart is filled with doubt
Whether we have it in us to get up with the day
And save ourselves on our own.

Love has the earth to hold onto
With hills and arms wrapping around—
Walls within walls to keep out fear.
But Thought doesn’t need any of that,
Because Thought has fearless wings.

On snow, sand, and grass, I see
Where Love has left its mark
With strain in the world’s embrace.
And that’s how Love is, happy to be.
But Thought has set itself free.

Thought cuts through the darkness of space
And sits in Sirius’ light all night,
Until day makes him retrace his route,
With the smell of smoke on every plume,
Back past the sun to a room on Earth.

What he gains in heaven is what it is.
Yet some say Love, by being bound
And simply staying, possesses all
In unique beauty that Thought travels far
To find fused in another star.

I left you in the morning,
And in the morning light,
You walked a path beside me
To make me sad to leave.
Do you recognize me in the twilight,
Thin and dusty gray from wandering?
Are you silent because you don’t know me,
Or silent because you do?

All for me? And not a single question
For the faded vibrant flowers
That could take me away from you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, so measure
Their worth for you to cherish,
The measure of the brief time
That I've been gone a while.

Out through the fields and the woods
I've roamed over the walls;
I have climbed the hills for a view
And looked at the world, then came down;
I have traveled home along the highway,
And here it is done.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Except for the ones that the oak is holding
To unravel one by one
And let them scrape and crawl
Out over the crusted snow,
While others are asleep.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer tossed around;
The last lonely aster has disappeared;
The witch-hazel flowers are wilting;
The heart still aches to seek,
But the feet ask, "Where to go?"

Ah, when to the heart of man
Has it ever felt like anything less than a betrayal?
To go with the flow of things,
To gracefully accept reason,
And bow and accept the end
Is it about love or a season?

One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and strong they hardly show the breeze,
Were not just a simple mask of gloom,
But stretched away to the brink of doom.

I shouldn’t be held back because someday
I would slip into their vastness away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or a road where the slow wheel moves the sand.

I don’t see why I should ever turn back,
Or why those who miss me shouldn’t track
To catch up with me, longing to know if I
Still hold them dear, or if I’ve said goodbye.

They wouldn’t find me different from the guy they
knew—
Just more certain of all I believed was true.