Plain Thinking
Abruptly leaving early, arriving late, `What kind of woman is she?-' I see in their eyes. I'll no more tell them about what kind She is, Than be plagued to recapitulate The words queued tamely up in dictionaries.
My country has a climate of extremes: I stand amid a plantless prairie : yes, The only living thing is me . . . unless That sand could prove the mirage . . . what just seems Bare ground and rootlessness and fruitlessness Turn out the trick. Well, patience is routine To monoliths. So I look again : And this time see my sea of sand is grain Ripening too slow for eyes to sense it hi One soundless heightening across one great terrain.
Recalling now those dictionary words That catalogue, in this that and the other thing, All that she is, I see a shuttering Above that corn of countless printblack birds Busy in flocks that feed and sing and sing.
JOHN HOLLOWAY
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