Clothespins on the Line
SAWNIE MORRIS
look like birds. Scrawny
winter birds balanced by two sarong
tail feathers. Some look west,
others north-
east toward the
mountain. Stiff in the cold &
remote. They haven’t been loved
enough. They grow
thinner and thinner in their woody
streaked feathers, held together only by
the exposed spiral of internal
organs. After a while , the sun comes
out and all o f the birds, clutching wire, turn
an electric silver.
This is hopeful,, but doesn’t last. Clouds
take a break from one another , ,
re-
convene. A half-inch of
snow is rolled out with perfect evenness
across the picnic table, as though
someone made a blank
for what was
coming. The nice thing
about clothespin birds is they don’t
“excrete.”
Jays & grosbeaks & finches
& mourning doves + ravens leave
their paintings
everywhere , on benches & limbs ,, , on fallen
pine needle fascicles \|/ feldspar & quartz _ __
though all has now become
gesso beneath snow. After a certain amount of
feeling
hopelessly under-
accomplished, you look at your nails
and want to
paint them. Is this how birds
feel? No. Birds fly
and don’t look
down. Or, they sit `’’ amid branches
and peck at the brittle waffled bark
& tiny bugs buried
in the marrow. .< sszt sszt sszt .< You, too,
peck. Familiar letters on t he keys have lost
their definition and resemble finger-
tip-size daubs of bird paint on back-
lit platforms. You recall the s e & m
only via entrenched neural pathways ,
while the l and c continue to
morph into tiny archaic
symbols. As though, the unconscious
is forming a message. ( Always “it” has something
unearthly to say. ) Except
the unconscious is
the earth , it’s just we
don’t know how she does it.
St. Thomas of Aquinas got a delirium
hit of t hat at the end
and decided to marry it. Each day
your thumbs grow paler, nails coarser, evolving
toward the ptero-
dactyl: part reptile, part bird.
As a child
pterodactyls scared you, which meant
they had your attention. Refusing to stay
in the lineage, they became
their own form.
They had an iguana for a father
and a pelican for a mom,
crispy and dipped in molasses.
If you were big enough
you could eat them
the way some people eat grass-
hoppers. Compulsive hole-
punchers, if less manic
could be sculptors,
th
SAWNIE MORRIS
look like birds. Scrawny
winter birds balanced by two sarong
tail feathers. Some look west,
others north-
east toward the
mountain. Stiff in the cold &
remote. They haven’t been loved
enough. They grow
thinner and thinner in their woody
streaked feathers, held together only by
the exposed spiral of internal
organs. After a while , the sun comes
out and all o f the birds, clutching wire, turn
an electric silver.
This is hopeful,, but doesn’t last. Clouds
take a break from one another , ,
re-
convene. A half-inch of
snow is rolled out with perfect evenness
across the picnic table, as though
someone made a blank
for what was
coming. The nice thing
about clothespin birds is they don’t
“excrete.”
Jays & grosbeaks & finches
& mourning doves + ravens leave
their paintings
everywhere , on benches & limbs ,, , on fallen
pine needle fascicles \|/ feldspar & quartz _ __
though all has now become
gesso beneath snow. After a certain amount of
feeling
hopelessly under-
accomplished, you look at your nails
and want to
paint them. Is this how birds
feel? No. Birds fly
and don’t look
down. Or, they sit `’’ amid branches
and peck at the brittle waffled bark
& tiny bugs buried
in the marrow. .< sszt sszt sszt .< You, too,
peck. Familiar letters on t he keys have lost
their definition and resemble finger-
tip-size daubs of bird paint on back-
lit platforms. You recall the s e & m
only via entrenched neural pathways ,
while the l and c continue to
morph into tiny archaic
symbols. As though, the unconscious
is forming a message. ( Always “it” has something
unearthly to say. ) Except
the unconscious is
the earth , it’s just we
don’t know how she does it.
St. Thomas of Aquinas got a delirium
hit of t hat at the end
and decided to marry it. Each day
your thumbs grow paler, nails coarser, evolving
toward the ptero-
dactyl: part reptile, part bird.
As a child
pterodactyls scared you, which meant
they had your attention. Refusing to stay
in the lineage, they became
their own form.
They had an iguana for a father
and a pelican for a mom,
crispy and dipped in molasses.
If you were big enough
you could eat them
the way some people eat grass-
hoppers. Compulsive hole-
punchers, if less manic
could be sculptors,
th
ough it requires d-e-t-a-c-h-m-e-n-t
to see it that way , , if you are
a lilac leaf sketching outside
the library window. What are those books
doing in there together ?! Nothing !
When a new one arrives, they fall in
love,, one by one. Inside their covers,
a million leaves, each
w/ black growth. A pattern of fungus ,
the shed skin of snakes & dna
traces. Like bird poop,
but more orderly and the message is see-
through. Don’t you
wish you could lift the letters
and release them halfway
back to
the liquid state ,, , before they got connected to
the circuitry? It might be kind of
relaxing. You might be
as good of a
painter
as a cuckoo bird. A few nights ago
you dreamt you were very pregnant &
in need of a place to give birth. Your boyfriend
had left you and 2 therapists
let you live w/ them
because you resembled their daughter —
though they were suspicious. Who can blame them?
As for your nails,
find a mani-
curist, someone who knows what they are
doing. Druids never lived here,
that was Europe, but you
and the sage-
brush
are distantly related via microbial
ancestors; in spite of yourself, you are
surrounded
by family. \\|/
Sawnie Morris won the New Issues Poetry Prize for Her, Infinite, released by New Issues Press in 2016. She lives in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. This is her first appearance in Poetry.
to see it that way , , if you are
a lilac leaf sketching outside
the library window. What are those books
doing in there together ?! Nothing !
When a new one arrives, they fall in
love,, one by one. Inside their covers,
a million leaves, each
w/ black growth. A pattern of fungus ,
the shed skin of snakes & dna
traces. Like bird poop,
but more orderly and the message is see-
through. Don’t you
wish you could lift the letters
and release them halfway
back to
the liquid state ,, , before they got connected to
the circuitry? It might be kind of
relaxing. You might be
as good of a
painter
as a cuckoo bird. A few nights ago
you dreamt you were very pregnant &
in need of a place to give birth. Your boyfriend
had left you and 2 therapists
let you live w/ them
because you resembled their daughter —
though they were suspicious. Who can blame them?
As for your nails,
find a mani-
curist, someone who knows what they are
doing. Druids never lived here,
that was Europe, but you
and the sage-
brush
are distantly related via microbial
ancestors; in spite of yourself, you are
surrounded
by family. \\|/
Sawnie Morris won the New Issues Poetry Prize for Her, Infinite, released by New Issues Press in 2016. She lives in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. This is her first appearance in Poetry.
Borrowed Bio
ANGE MLINKO
Where we’d recently lain,
exchanging a kiss,
stork consorted with crane,
limpkin with ibis.
Was this as much wedding
as there would ever be,
the fowls’ foot-webbing,
the identificatory
ring around a throat?
Exchange of earth and air:
not a vow but a vote
of confidence a feather
might tip by a single scale ...
That one’s a raconteur,
so much salt in his tale;
this one’s a countertenor,
lilting above the feast.
The archon of his hectare
— spotted — spotted least.
Here’s a little heckler ...
penciled seagull in the margin.
Following line by line
the path you took, I imagine
no print so fine.
Ange Mlinko’s newest collection of poetry, Distant Mandate, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux this year. She teaches at the University of Florida.
@PensivePost
ANGE MLINKO
Where we’d recently lain,
exchanging a kiss,
stork consorted with crane,
limpkin with ibis.
Was this as much wedding
as there would ever be,
the fowls’ foot-webbing,
the identificatory
ring around a throat?
Exchange of earth and air:
not a vow but a vote
of confidence a feather
might tip by a single scale ...
That one’s a raconteur,
so much salt in his tale;
this one’s a countertenor,
lilting above the feast.
The archon of his hectare
— spotted — spotted least.
Here’s a little heckler ...
penciled seagull in the margin.
Following line by line
the path you took, I imagine
no print so fine.
Ange Mlinko’s newest collection of poetry, Distant Mandate, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux this year. She teaches at the University of Florida.
@PensivePost
What to Read This Summer
ANGE MLINKO
Terrible are the rose names ...
Stakeholders in a tradition of
“Grande Amore” and “True Love”
(one carmine, the other blush ... ), their aims
are, for the most part, scattershot.
“Mothersday” and “Playboy,”
“Senior Prom” and “Let’s Enjoy”
vie with a lyrical “Lady of Shalott,”
while a flyweight “Pink Knockout”
comes “Outta the Blue” to mock
“Honey Perfume,” “Pillow Talk”
— jock Cupid wielding clout.
Then maybe a puckish curator
pairs “Las Vegas” with “Nearly Wild,”
“Buttercream” with “Julia Child,”
“Aloha” with “Hello, Neighbor ... ”
•
Misenus, son of Aeolus, god of the wind,
don’t you think it’s bad form
to practice trumpet on this platform,
what with the dentistry squeal
at construction site decibel levels
of braking blade shaving molar steel,
dropped-in blare of delays and arrivals
squelched against granite, at close intervals,
while you riff on “Over the Rainbow” — ?
You received some negative attention
from Triton, after blowing his conch so loud
you inadvertently entered yourself
in an unwinnable contest; now,
stuck in a twenty-first-century translation
of hell, you press the stops, and for an obol
prepare our burial in an infinite axial scroll
with a tinier and tinier turning radius,
as if we were those hordes, the unsanctified,
who shoved one another along the Cocytus,
none led on to the golden bough
by Venus’s semaphore, the unloved rock doves,
whom Virgil treats so gently in the Aeneid.
Ange Mlinko’s newest collection of poetry, Distant Mandate, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux this year. She teaches at the University of Florida.
@PensivePost
ANGE MLINKO
Terrible are the rose names ...
Stakeholders in a tradition of
“Grande Amore” and “True Love”
(one carmine, the other blush ... ), their aims
are, for the most part, scattershot.
“Mothersday” and “Playboy,”
“Senior Prom” and “Let’s Enjoy”
vie with a lyrical “Lady of Shalott,”
while a flyweight “Pink Knockout”
comes “Outta the Blue” to mock
“Honey Perfume,” “Pillow Talk”
— jock Cupid wielding clout.
Then maybe a puckish curator
pairs “Las Vegas” with “Nearly Wild,”
“Buttercream” with “Julia Child,”
“Aloha” with “Hello, Neighbor ... ”
•
Misenus, son of Aeolus, god of the wind,
don’t you think it’s bad form
to practice trumpet on this platform,
what with the dentistry squeal
at construction site decibel levels
of braking blade shaving molar steel,
dropped-in blare of delays and arrivals
squelched against granite, at close intervals,
while you riff on “Over the Rainbow” — ?
You received some negative attention
from Triton, after blowing his conch so loud
you inadvertently entered yourself
in an unwinnable contest; now,
stuck in a twenty-first-century translation
of hell, you press the stops, and for an obol
prepare our burial in an infinite axial scroll
with a tinier and tinier turning radius,
as if we were those hordes, the unsanctified,
who shoved one another along the Cocytus,
none led on to the golden bough
by Venus’s semaphore, the unloved rock doves,
whom Virgil treats so gently in the Aeneid.
Ange Mlinko’s newest collection of poetry, Distant Mandate, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux this year. She teaches at the University of Florida.
@PensivePost
Mother, the folk who live up in the clouds call out to me-
"We play from the time we wake till the day ends.
We play with the golden dawn, we play with the silver moon."
I ask, "But how am I to get up to you ?"
They answer, "Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your
hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds."
"My mother is waiting for me at home, "I say, "How can I leave
her and come?"
Then they smile and float away.
But I know a nicer game than that, mother.
I shall be the cloud and you the moon.
I shall cover you with both my hands, and our house-top will
be the blue sky.
The folk who live in the waves call out to me-
"We sing from morning till night; on and on we travel and know
not where we pass."
I ask, "But how am I to join you?"
They tell me, "Come to the edge of the shore and stand with
your eyes tight shut, and you will be carried out upon the waves."
I say, "My mother always wants me at home in the everything-
how can I leave her and go?"
They smile, dance and pass by.
But I know a better game than that.
I will be the waves and you will be a strange shore.
I shall roll on and on and on, and break upon your lap with
laughter.
And no one in the world will know where we both are.
Clouds and waves by #RabindranathTagore
"We play from the time we wake till the day ends.
We play with the golden dawn, we play with the silver moon."
I ask, "But how am I to get up to you ?"
They answer, "Come to the edge of the earth, lift up your
hands to the sky, and you will be taken up into the clouds."
"My mother is waiting for me at home, "I say, "How can I leave
her and come?"
Then they smile and float away.
But I know a nicer game than that, mother.
I shall be the cloud and you the moon.
I shall cover you with both my hands, and our house-top will
be the blue sky.
The folk who live in the waves call out to me-
"We sing from morning till night; on and on we travel and know
not where we pass."
I ask, "But how am I to join you?"
They tell me, "Come to the edge of the shore and stand with
your eyes tight shut, and you will be carried out upon the waves."
I say, "My mother always wants me at home in the everything-
how can I leave her and go?"
They smile, dance and pass by.
But I know a better game than that.
I will be the waves and you will be a strange shore.
I shall roll on and on and on, and break upon your lap with
laughter.
And no one in the world will know where we both are.
Clouds and waves by #RabindranathTagore
Love, a moment drop thy hands;
Night within my soul expands.
Veil thy beauties milk-rose-fair
In that dark and showering hair.
Coral kisses ravish not
When the soul is tinged with thought;
Burning looks are then forbid.
Let each shyly-parted lid
Hover like a settling dove
O’er those deep-blue wells of Love.
Darkness brightens; silvering flee
Pomps of foam the driven sea.
In this garden’s dim repose
Lighted with the burning rose,
Soft narcissi’s golden camp
Glimmering or with rosier lamp
Censered honeysuckle guessed
By the fragrance of her breast,–
Here where summer’s hands have crowned
Silence in the fields of sound,
Here felicity should be.
Hearken, Edith, to the sea.
What a voice of grief intrudes
On these happy solitudes!
To the wind that with him dwells
Ocean, old historian, tells
All the dreadful heart of tears
Hidden in the pleasant years.
Summer’s children, what do ye
By the stern and cheerless sea?
Not we first nor we alone
Heard the mighty Ocean moan
By this treasure-house of flowers
In the sweet ambiguous hours.
Many a girl’s lips ruby-red
With their vernal honey fed
Happy mouths, and soft cheeks flushed
With Love’s rosy sunlight blushed.
Ruddy lips of many a boy
Blithe discovered hills of joy
Ruby-guided through a kiss
To the sweet highways of bliss.
Here they saw the evening still
Coming slowly from the hill
And the patient stars arise
To their outposts in the skies;
Heard the ocean shoreward urge
The speed and thunder of his surge,
Singing heard as though a bee
Noontide waters on the sea.
These no longer. For our rose
In her place they wreathed once, blows,
And thy glorious garland, sweet,
Kissed not once those wandering feet.
All the lights of spring are ended,
To the wintry haven wended.
Beauty’s boons and nectarous leisure,
Lips, the honeycombs of pleasure,
Cheeks enrosed, Love’s natal soil,
Breasts, the ardent conqueror’s spoil,
Spring rejects; a lovelier child
His brittle fancies has beguiled.
O her name that to repeat
Than the Dorian muse more sweet
Could the white hand more relume
Writing and refresh the bloom
Of lips that used such syllables then,
Dies unloved by later men.
Are we more than summer flowers?
Shall a longer date be ours,
Rose and springtime, youth and we
By the everlasting sea?
Are they blown as legends tell
In the smoke and gurge of hell?
Writhe they in relucent gyres
O’er a circle sad of fires?
In what lightless groves must they
Or unmurmuring alleys stray?
Fields no sunlight visits, streams
Where no happy lotus gleams?
Yet, where’er their steps below,
Memories sweet for comrades go.
Lethe’s waters had their will,
But the soul remembers still.
Beauty pays her boon of breath
To thy narrow credit, Death,
Leaving a brief perfume; we
Perish also by the sea.
We shall lose, ah me! too soon
Lose the clear and silent moon,
The serenities of night
And the deeper evening light.
We shall know not when the morn
In the widening East is born,
Never feel the west-wind stir,
Spring’s delightful messenger,
Never under branches lain
Dally with the sweet-lipped rain,
Watch the moments of the tree,
Nor know the sounds that tread the sea.
With thy kisses chase this gloom: –
Thoughts, the children of the tomb.
Kiss me, Edith. Soon the night
Comes and hides the happy light.
Nature’s vernal darlings dead
From new founts of life are fed.
Dawn relumes the immortal skies.
Ah! what boon for earth-closed eyes?
Love’s sweet debts are standing, sweet;
Honied payment to complete
Haste – a million is to pay –
Lest too soon the allotted day
End and we oblivious keep
Darkness and eternal sleep.
See! the moon from heaven falls.
In thy bosom’s snow-white walls
Softly and supremely housed
Shut my heart up; keep it closed
Like a rose of Indian grain,
Like that rose against the rain,
Closed to all that life applauds,
Nature’s perishable gauds,
And the airs that burdened be
With such thoughts as shake the sea.
@PensivePost
Night by the sea by #SriAurobindo
Night within my soul expands.
Veil thy beauties milk-rose-fair
In that dark and showering hair.
Coral kisses ravish not
When the soul is tinged with thought;
Burning looks are then forbid.
Let each shyly-parted lid
Hover like a settling dove
O’er those deep-blue wells of Love.
Darkness brightens; silvering flee
Pomps of foam the driven sea.
In this garden’s dim repose
Lighted with the burning rose,
Soft narcissi’s golden camp
Glimmering or with rosier lamp
Censered honeysuckle guessed
By the fragrance of her breast,–
Here where summer’s hands have crowned
Silence in the fields of sound,
Here felicity should be.
Hearken, Edith, to the sea.
What a voice of grief intrudes
On these happy solitudes!
To the wind that with him dwells
Ocean, old historian, tells
All the dreadful heart of tears
Hidden in the pleasant years.
Summer’s children, what do ye
By the stern and cheerless sea?
Not we first nor we alone
Heard the mighty Ocean moan
By this treasure-house of flowers
In the sweet ambiguous hours.
Many a girl’s lips ruby-red
With their vernal honey fed
Happy mouths, and soft cheeks flushed
With Love’s rosy sunlight blushed.
Ruddy lips of many a boy
Blithe discovered hills of joy
Ruby-guided through a kiss
To the sweet highways of bliss.
Here they saw the evening still
Coming slowly from the hill
And the patient stars arise
To their outposts in the skies;
Heard the ocean shoreward urge
The speed and thunder of his surge,
Singing heard as though a bee
Noontide waters on the sea.
These no longer. For our rose
In her place they wreathed once, blows,
And thy glorious garland, sweet,
Kissed not once those wandering feet.
All the lights of spring are ended,
To the wintry haven wended.
Beauty’s boons and nectarous leisure,
Lips, the honeycombs of pleasure,
Cheeks enrosed, Love’s natal soil,
Breasts, the ardent conqueror’s spoil,
Spring rejects; a lovelier child
His brittle fancies has beguiled.
O her name that to repeat
Than the Dorian muse more sweet
Could the white hand more relume
Writing and refresh the bloom
Of lips that used such syllables then,
Dies unloved by later men.
Are we more than summer flowers?
Shall a longer date be ours,
Rose and springtime, youth and we
By the everlasting sea?
Are they blown as legends tell
In the smoke and gurge of hell?
Writhe they in relucent gyres
O’er a circle sad of fires?
In what lightless groves must they
Or unmurmuring alleys stray?
Fields no sunlight visits, streams
Where no happy lotus gleams?
Yet, where’er their steps below,
Memories sweet for comrades go.
Lethe’s waters had their will,
But the soul remembers still.
Beauty pays her boon of breath
To thy narrow credit, Death,
Leaving a brief perfume; we
Perish also by the sea.
We shall lose, ah me! too soon
Lose the clear and silent moon,
The serenities of night
And the deeper evening light.
We shall know not when the morn
In the widening East is born,
Never feel the west-wind stir,
Spring’s delightful messenger,
Never under branches lain
Dally with the sweet-lipped rain,
Watch the moments of the tree,
Nor know the sounds that tread the sea.
With thy kisses chase this gloom: –
Thoughts, the children of the tomb.
Kiss me, Edith. Soon the night
Comes and hides the happy light.
Nature’s vernal darlings dead
From new founts of life are fed.
Dawn relumes the immortal skies.
Ah! what boon for earth-closed eyes?
Love’s sweet debts are standing, sweet;
Honied payment to complete
Haste – a million is to pay –
Lest too soon the allotted day
End and we oblivious keep
Darkness and eternal sleep.
See! the moon from heaven falls.
In thy bosom’s snow-white walls
Softly and supremely housed
Shut my heart up; keep it closed
Like a rose of Indian grain,
Like that rose against the rain,
Closed to all that life applauds,
Nature’s perishable gauds,
And the airs that burdened be
With such thoughts as shake the sea.
@PensivePost
Night by the sea by #SriAurobindo
I -wake and find myself in love:
And this one time I do not doubt.
I only fear, and wander out
To hold long parley with a dove.
The innocent and the guilty, met
Here in the garden, feel no fear.
But I'm afraid of you, my dear.
There was a reason: I forget.
And I by shyness am undone
And can't go out for fear I meet
My poems dancing down the street
Telling your name to everyone.
The lichen peels along the wall.
My conversation bores the dove.
He knows it all: that I'm in love
And you care much and not at all.
I shall stay here and keep my word.
Glumly I wait to marry dust.
It grieves me only that I must
Speak not to you, but to a bird.
@PensivePost
The Garden
By #DomMoraes
And this one time I do not doubt.
I only fear, and wander out
To hold long parley with a dove.
The innocent and the guilty, met
Here in the garden, feel no fear.
But I'm afraid of you, my dear.
There was a reason: I forget.
And I by shyness am undone
And can't go out for fear I meet
My poems dancing down the street
Telling your name to everyone.
The lichen peels along the wall.
My conversation bores the dove.
He knows it all: that I'm in love
And you care much and not at all.
I shall stay here and keep my word.
Glumly I wait to marry dust.
It grieves me only that I must
Speak not to you, but to a bird.
@PensivePost
The Garden
By #DomMoraes
"The Banjo Player"
There is music in me, the music of a peasant people
I wander through the levee, picking my banjo and singing my songs of the cabin and the field
At the Last Chance Saloon I am as welcome as the violets in March;
there is always food and drink for me there, and the dimes of those who love honest music
Behind the railroad tracks the little children clap their hands and love me as they love Kris Kringle
But I fear that I am a failure
Last night a woman called me a troubadour
What is a troubadour?
@PensivePost by #FentonJohnson
There is music in me, the music of a peasant people
I wander through the levee, picking my banjo and singing my songs of the cabin and the field
At the Last Chance Saloon I am as welcome as the violets in March;
there is always food and drink for me there, and the dimes of those who love honest music
Behind the railroad tracks the little children clap their hands and love me as they love Kris Kringle
But I fear that I am a failure
Last night a woman called me a troubadour
What is a troubadour?
@PensivePost by #FentonJohnson
Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travel’d a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.
(Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour, carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us diverse for ever;
Be not impatient—a little space—Know you, I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.)
@PensivePost by #WaltWhitman
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travel’d a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.
(Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love—we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure—the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour, carrying us diverse—yet cannot carry us diverse for ever;
Be not impatient—a little space—Know you, I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.)
@PensivePost by #WaltWhitman
MAGDALEN WALKS
The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.
A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,
The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.
And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.
See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.
@PensivePost by #OscarWilde
The little white clouds are racing over the sky,
And the fields are strewn with the gold of the flower of March,
The daffodil breaks under foot, and the tasselled larch
Sways and swings as the thrush goes hurrying by.
A delicate odour is borne on the wings of the morning breeze,
The odour of deep wet grass, and of brown new-furrowed earth,
The birds are singing for joy of the Spring's glad birth,
Hopping from branch to branch on the rocking trees.
And all the woods are alive with the murmur and sound of Spring,
And the rose-bud breaks into pink on the climbing briar,
And the crocus-bed is a quivering moon of fire
Girdled round with the belt of an amethyst ring.
And the plane to the pine-tree is whispering some tale of love
Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green,
And the gloom of the wych-elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen
Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove.
See! the lark starts up from his bed in the meadow there,
Breaking the gossamer threads and the nets of dew,
And flashing adown the river, a flame of blue!
The kingfisher flies like an arrow, and wounds the air.
@PensivePost by #OscarWilde