November
1. Leaves
My great trees are stripping themselves,
Throwing away their gauds,
Preparing for the winter of their souls.
But my little cedars
Are picking up the twisted golden baubles
And sticking them in their hair.
2. Overhead Travellers
There you go in your breathless wedge,
Melting across the sky over my house like a clamoring shadow!
My heart leaps, and I flap my wings wildly,
But I cannot go just yet.
My fledglings do not grow so fast as yours,
I must scratch for them longer.
But some day, we, too, shall take the air-lines
My mate and I.
(Unless, indeed, I shall have found real wings in the meantime.
In that case, it won't matter,
For I shall go farther than you, then, haughty birds.)
3. Grey Days
On a grey day
When I am alone,
My heart glows and blooms
Like embers among ashes.
On a grey day
When I am alone,
The tent-fires of nomads,
And the road-fires of palmers,
And the hearth-fires of builders
Burn in my spirit.
4. Acorns
Now and then, all through the day and night,
An acorn drops on the roof and goes rattling down the gutter.
I cannot tell why the sound delights me,
Or why I have such a pleased and noticed feeling,
As of a child that shares a joke with its parent,
When I think of the black old oak
Stretching his craggy arms over my roof-tree
And dropping his polished pebbles on my house.
~~
Karle Wilson Baker (1878-1960)
from Burning Bush, 1922
[Poems are in the public domain in Canada and the United States]
Karle Wilson Baker biography
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