For eyes he waves greentipped taut horns of slime. They dipped, hours back, across a reef, a salmonberry leaf. Then strained to grope past fin of spruce. Now eyes suck in as through the hemlock butts of his day's ledge there cuts a vixen chipmunk. Stilled is he—green mucus chilled, or blotched and soapy stone, pinguid in moss, alone. Hours on, he will resume his silver scrawl, illume his palimpsest, emboss his diver's line across that waving green illim- itable seafloor. Slim young jay his sudden shark; the wrecks he skirts are dark and fungussed firlogs, whom spirea sprays emplume, encoral. Dew his shell, while mounting boles foretell of isles in dappled air fathoms above his care. Azygous muted life, himself his viscid wife, foodward he noses cold beneath his sea. So spends a summer's jasper century. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...HALF-WAKING by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM ONE POET VISITS ANOTHER by WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES ODE ON A GRECIAN URN by JOHN KEATS TO AMARANTHA, THAT SHE WOULD DISHEVEL HER HAIR by RICHARD LOVELACE A BALLAD OF DEATH by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A MASQUE OF DEAD QUEENS by STANLEY E. BABB EPITAPH ON ONE DROWNED IN THE SNOW by WILLIAM BROWNE (1591-1643) |