266
his apparently hesitant
turning this way and that is
just delighted watchfulness.
Afternoons he spends mainly
resting. And nights
on a weed stem, I suppose,
stiff ening with the chill,
the stem knobbly with dew when
the morning sun fi rst strikes it.
vi
unattended
Decrepit-looking, the elm
has come back every summer
for forty years I know of,
gradually fi lling up
with dead gray woodlike brush,
and its crooked, blackish boughs
have held out, so far,
this summer, too,
against the wind-storms,
its leaves scanty,
dark and strong-ribbed
as if independent
of the old structure
from which they plainly hang.
vii
the `pasture'
-- what we called the strip of ground
eight or ten paces across
at the widest, in between