Under the Tree | Page 7

were stiff and sore
For he had gone some
twenty-eight miles,
And he'd walked through by watergaps
And
fences and gates and stiles.
He said he'd been by Logan's woods,
And up by Walton's branch and
Simms,
And there were sticktights on his clothes
And little dusts of
seeds and stems.
And then he sat down on the steps,
And he said the miles were on his
feet.
For some of that land was tangled brush,
And some was
plowed for wheat.
The rabbits were thick where he had been,
And he said he'd found
some ripe papaws.
He'd rested under a white oak tree,
And for his
dinner he ate red haws.
Then I sat by him on the step
To see the things that he had seen.

And I could smell the shocks and clods,
And the land where he had
been.
MR. PENNYBAKER AT CHURCH
He holds his songbook very low,
And then he stretches down his face,

And Mother said, "You mustn't watch,
He's only singing bass."
He makes his voice go walking down,
Or else he hurries twice as fast

As all the rest, but even then
He finishes the song the last.
And when I see him singing there,
I wonder if he knows it all

About Leviticus and Shem
And Deuteronomy and Saul.

THE WOLVES
When Grandmother Polly had married and gone,
But before her
father had given her Clem,
Or Joe, or Sandy, or Evaline--
Before he
had given her any of _them_,
She used to live in a far-away place,
In a little cabin that was her
home,
And all around were bushes and trees,
And the wolves could
come.
At night they ran down out of the rocks
And bristled up their trembly
fur.
They came and howled by Polly's door
And showed their little
white teeth at her.
A BEAUTIFUL LADY
We like to listen to her dress,
It makes a whisper by her feet.
Her
little pointed shoes are gray;
She hardly lets them touch the street.
Sometimes she has a crumpled fan.
Her hat is silvered on the crown.

And there are roses by the brim
That nod and tremble up and
down.
She comes along the pavement walk,
And in a moment she is gone.

She hardly ever looks at us,
But once she smiled and looked at John.
And so we run to see her pass
And watch her through the fence, and I

Can hear the others whispering,
"Miss Josephine is going by."
SHELLS IN ROCK
I've been along the quarry road,
And I have watched men digging
wells,
And everywhere it was the same--
The stones were full of
little shells.
And they are packed away in rock;
They're under sand and under clay;


And some one said that they were left
When the ocean went away.
I saw them in the stones that make
A church, and in a bridge.

They're hidden in the solid rock
But they show along the edge.
You see them in foundation stones;
They show in creeks and
waterfalls;
And once I saw them on the jail--
More little shells in
walls.
We walk on them when we walk on roads;
And they're packed under
all the hills.
Suppose the sea should come back here
And gather up
its shells.
HORSE
His bridle hung around the post.
The sun and the leaves made spots
come down;
I looked close at him through the fence;
The post was
drab and he was brown.
His nose was long and hard and still,
And on his lip were specks like
chalk.
But once he opened up his eyes,
And he began to talk.
He didn't talk out with his mouth;
He didn't talk with words or noise.

The talk was there along his nose;
It seemed and then it was.
He said the day was hot and slow,
And he said he didn't like the flies;

They made him have to shake his skin,
And they got drowned in
his eyes.
He said that drab was just about
The same as brown, but he was not

A post, he said, to hold a fence.
"I'm horse," he said, "that's what!"
And then he shut his eyes again.
As still as they had been before.

He said for me to run along
And not to bother him any more.
AUGUST NIGHT

We had to wait for the heat to pass,
And I was lying on the grass,
While Mother sat outside the door,
And I saw how many stars there
were.
Beyond the tree, beyond the air,
And more and more were always
there.
So many that I think they must
Be sprinkled on the sky like dust.
A dust is coming through the sky!
And I felt myself begin to cry.
So many of them and so small,
Suppose I cannot know them all.
THREE DOMINICAN NUNS
One day they came; I heard their feet.
They made a tapping on the
street.
And as they passed before our trees,
Their shawls blew out in curves
like threes,
And bent again in twos and L's;
The wind blew on their rosaries
And made them ring like little bells.
MY HEART
My heart is beating up and down,
Is walking like some heavy feet.

My heart is going every day,
And I can hear it