# $ ' ( . 1 2 5 7 8 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [

The Farm on the Great Plains

A telephone line goes cold;
birds tread it wherever it goes.
A farm back of a great plain
tugs an end of the line.

I call that farm every year,
ringing it, listening, still;
no one is home at the farm,
the line gives only a hum.

Some year I will ring the line
on a night at last the right one,
and with an eye tapered for braille
from the phone on the wall

I will see the tenant who waits —
the last one left at the place;
through the dark my braille eye
will lovingly touch his face.

The Festubert Shrine

A sycamore on either side
In whose lovely leafage cried
Hushingly the little winds —
Thus was Mary’ s shrine descried.

“Sixteen Hundred and Twenty-Four”
Legended above the door,
“Pray, sweet gracious Lady, pray
For our souls,” — and nothing more.

Builded of rude gray stones and these
Scarred and marred from base to frieze
With the shrapnel’ s pounces — ah,
Fair she braved War’ s gaunt disease:

The Fetch

I woke. You were lying beside me in the double bed,
prone, your long dark hair fanned out over the downy pillow.

I’ d been dreaming we stood on a beach an ocean away
watching the waves purl into their troughs and tumble over.

Knit one, purl two, you said. Something in your voice made me think
of women knitting by the guillotine. Your eyes met mine.

The fetch of a wave is the distance it travels, you said,
from where it is born at sea to where it founders to shore.

The Fire of Drift-wood

We sat within the farm-house old,
Whose windows, looking o'er the bay,
Gave to the sea-breeze damp and cold,
An easy entrance, night and day.

Not far away we saw the port,
The strange, old-fashioned, silent town,
The lighthouse, the dismantled fort,
The wooden houses, quaint and brown.

Pages