Friday, May 31, 2013

SUNRISE

The lean coyote, prowler of the night,
Slips to his rocky fastnesses.
. Jack-rabbits noiselessly shuttle among the sage-brush,
And, from the castellated cliffs, 
 Rock-ravens launch their proud black sails upon the day.
            IThe wild horses troop back to their pastures.
            The poplar-trees watch beside the irrigation-ditches.
            Orioles, whose nests sway in the cotton-wood trees by the ditch-side, begin to twitter.

All shy things, breathless, watch
The thin white skirts of dawn,
The dancer of the sky,
Who trips daintily down the mountain-side
Emptying her crystal chalice. . . .
And a red-bird, dipped in sunrise, cracks from a poplar's top

 !lis exultant whip above a silver world.
(From "The Poet in the Desert")

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