POEMS
Night drops on the lovers, marram and voices.
Dark hinders eyes, yet aids the brutal hand.
Watchers depart, but the snares are filling.
Wind dries the blood on the moving sand.
LeGarde S.
Doughty
END-WINTER NIGHT SOUTH
Staying late from bed, he gets down on one knee,
Stirs sweet-gum log, brews coffee at fireplace.
He has heard wind slash the less-than-hair-line brace
Of calm latitude across his own rooftree.
Nothing but an acre and this hearth are his-
Besides naturalism-so he bends observant brow
Over pine cone, on the front bricks, burned out white.
It made fierce kindling early in the night,
But looks more like a shrunk magnolia now
Than what it is.
Europe is not on his shoulders, thank God, nor Asia;
Only pollen of althea and acacia.
Tomorrow he'll glance at his neighbor's land, hut still
He'll scarcely see his neighbor's plowshare coil
Its gritty screw-threads up the sorry hill,
Or see erosion rhyme neighbor's soul with soil.
He'll snap pine needle, crush it in his mouth;
And add leaf-mold to his sand-top, share-crop South.
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