Ivan Swift

IT is large life to sit on the door-log

Of the Hill Tavern,

Among the distinguished birches

Standing in groups,

And look beyond the monotonous green floor

Of the matted tree-tops of the lower land

To the high horizon and the barges,

And the purple island in a ring of gold.

But I am of the lowland,

Of the undistinguished trees and juniper,

And must go down the deliberate trail

Of the undistinguished dead—

And no noon.

Below the bluff-rim—

The trees now are more separate

And individual of pattern;

But the dusk marries them to one another,

And their top branches intertwine,

Like parasols in a crowded park of listeners,

As far as the path leads to the valley terrace.

Then the black belt of tamarack

And tangled bittersweet

Is like the Lower Ten, leaning on brothers

To make stand against the uncertain winds,

And dying in the smother of a brief day.

Out of this and on the far side, I knew—

And the stranger would scarce surmise

And rarely venture—

The sun dances in golden tack-points

On the near, cool shallows of the sea.

The gray islands have gone down

Over the world’s rim,

And the freight barges are companion buoys

Floating in pairs under thin smoke fans.

The ring of gold is at my feet, glistening!—

Washed clean by the white surf-reefs

Broken by the blue shadow of a gull.

A single tiger-lily

Flames in a whorl of beach-juniper.