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Faithfully he barks for all the silent,
Irregular shapes on this wooded slope
Where the moon is shining
And the house stands;
I go back in and hunch over
The familiar hiss of my pencil tip
Racing across the lighted page.
the heavily watered whiskey
of this december sunlight
... if time is friend
or enemy? we stand still
by going and go
standing still:
along a hillside this
midwinter afternoon,
"An old thing to be doing" -- what?
"Filing down a trail like this,"
I tell her, the pleasure of it
that we are partly roused ancestors, or
as if we were an old trellis
with a young vine in it
where now the air is moving
birds visit the grapes
the season lives
a sunny and windy freshness
so ancient -- this
or nothing for us.