13 Baby Face
White moon comes in on a baby face.
The shafts across her bed are flimmering.
Out on the land White Moon shines,
Shines and glimmers against gnarled shadows,
All silver to slow twisted shadows
Falling across the long road that runs from the house.
Keep a little of your beauty
And some of your flimmering silver
For her by the window to-night
Where you come in, White Moon.
14 Goldwing Moth
A goldwing moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle on the desk
Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb and a flame wire.
The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks.
15 Prayers of Steel
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.
Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper
through blue nights into white stars.
16 Improved Farmland
Tall timber stood here once, here on a corn belt farm along the Monon.
Here the roots of a half mile of trees dug their runners deep in the loam for a grip and a hold against wind storms.
Then the axmen came and the chips flew to the zing of steel and handle the lank railsplitters cut the big ones first, the beeches and the oaks, then the brush.
Dynamite, wagons and horses took the stumps–the plows sunk their teeth in–now it is first class corn land–improved property–and the hogs grunt over the fodder crops.
It would come hard now for this half mile of improved farm land along the Monon corn belt, on a piece of Grand Prairie, to remember once it had a great singing family of trees.
17 Primer Lesson
Look out how you use proud words.
When you let proud words go
It is not easy to call them back.
They wear long boots, hard boots;
They walk off proud;
They can’t hear you calling—
Look out how you use proud words.
18 Baby Toes
There is a blue star, Janet,
Fifteen years’ ride from us,
If we ride a hundred miles an hour.
There is a white star, Janet,
Forty years’ ride from us,
If we ride a hundred miles an hour.
Shall we ride
To the blue star
Or the white star?
19 Basket
Speak, sir, and be wise.
Speak choosing your words, sir,
like an old woman over a bushel of apples.
20 Five Cent Balloons
Pietro has twenty red and blue balloons on a string.
They flutter and dance pulling Pietro’s arm.
A nickel apiece is what they sell for.
Wishing children tag Pietro’s heels.
He sells out and goes the streets alone.
21 Good Night
Many ways to spell good night.
Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue and then go out.
Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.
Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying in a baritone
that crosses lowland cottonfields to a razorback hill.
It is easy to spell good night.
Many ways to spell good night.
22 Harvest Sunset
Red gold of pools,
Sunset furrows six o’clock,
And the farmer done in the fields
And the cows in the barns with bulging udders.
Take the cows and the farmer,
Take the barns and bulging udders.
Leave the red gold of pools
And sunset furrows six o’clock.
The farmer’s wife is singing.
The farmer’s boy is whistling.
I wash my hands in red gold of pools.