Daniel Whitehead Hicky

I could not tell by sound of wind Nor sighing of a single flake Against the pane that all the world Lay pale with snow in darkness’ wake,

And sad am I that I was left Outside this secret of the night That turned a thousand blackened boughs Into a flowering of white.

Since man has little time to learn Through springtime’s doubtful weather How tireless fingers of the sun Put apple blooms together,

Had but the wind’s voice prompted me, Or hint of snowflake drifted through, I could have witnessed in an hour What April takes a month to do.

On a day that was pink and yellow, Pink where the laurel grew, Dragging the stream with its blossoms, Shaking it off like dew Where the wind caught up its branches, On a day that was yellow with sun Gilding the foam going over The falls where the speckled trout run, I stood on the banks for an hour, My thoughts as cool as the fern As I saw a fisherman casting, As I watched him twist and turn Deep in the rushing of waters That carried the sun on its way Over the rocks and past the laurel, Bursting in golden spray.

“How beautiful here,” I whispered Quite to myself as I stood At the edge of the stream’s wild music That woke the quiet wood, “How at peace the cedars and mountains,” I added to what I had said, But a shout in the bright waters shook me And suddenly I turned my head To see in the warm yellow morning, Like an arrow suspended in flight, A trout with a rhythm like music. Lovely it was in the light Of a day that was pink and yellow, A peaceful day I had thought, And my heart leaped up as I watched it Fighting the line that had caught It up and over the falling Of waters that were its home, Up from the banks of the laurel, Over the spending of foam.

Then I turned away from the fern banks And I took the valley road, And when the hours had sifted their sands And weariness heavied my load, I paused in a cooling patch of shade And cursed with an honest breath That a pink and yellow morning Should know the silver twitch of death.

Always in summertime I wish that I Might stare astonished as a daisy’s eye That looks on every dawn as though it were The eastern sky’s first lanterned traveler, And at the sun of noon burning molten-bright, As though it were the earth’s last show of light.

There is no thing on earth but it is new To any daisy’s eye: the fleeting blue Of butterfly wings, the sudden golden drone A bee composes over the scented cone Of clover blossoms; the repeated sight Of daylight going, and the coming night. The first crust of a new moon, or the last, Alerts a daisy’s eye and holds it fast.

Always in summertime I wish that I Might stare astonished as a daisy’s eye At everything I’ve seen before, and find A newness and a brightness that would blind Me to my way of thinking, and hold my tongue. A daisy’s eye might keep an old man young.

I have a need of gulls again and their flying Over the foam-white acres of the sea Where the sunrise drifts like a fleet of ships afire, And the dark like eternity. I have a need for the yellow sea oat’s music And the single salty note Curled in the palm of a shell as pale as the sigh In a sandpiper’s throat.

Too long the city has housed me and fed me its fare, Too long I have run with the crowd; I have a need to be free again like the gulls, To bathe my face in the cool white peace of a cloud. I have a need to lie at length on the sands, To unshoulder my burdens out where the seagulls cry, And to all of my heart’s dark questions unanswered Hear the white answers they write in the sky.

This is the spider lily’s slumberous hour, The gold lantanas’ on the broken fence; The cricket’s bronze siesta. The cockscomb flower Withers and droops in carmine opulence. Cape jasmines, nodding, shift the last red dust A wagon made, and whiten once again; Spreading hot wings, a sparrow eyes the west, Scorning its broken promises of rain. A yellow jacket rises now and falls In failing rhythms where the heat drifts clear Over a motionless sea of cotton bolls Ripening on leaves no single wind has stirred. Red cannas’ listless tongues hang on the air, Speechless, even, for a scarlet word.

Bare-breasted now and unashamed the wood Stands cold as stone against the quiet hour. Small eyes of rabbits, sharp with hunger’s search, Kindle brown grasses where the wind has stood Half frozen through a night of motionless birch. The imminence of snow, pale flake on flake, Locked in a cloud withholds its shining power Which in a moment’s space may stir and break. Not till the snow is gone, the bladed cold, Shall I return to these stripped woods again; Walking through silence here I seem to move In measured quiet among a thousand men Lashed by the whips of life, broken and old, Lonely as all men are bereft of love.

Slowly, a shadow’s length this side of day, The small boats edge to sea with less of sound Than the wind takes to lift a cloud of spray. In salty blackness now the fishing ground Trembles with ebbing tides that brought with night Small topaz islands of sargasso grass; Closer to shore the sea anemones light Under the breakers as they pause and pass. Lost now at sea, or almost lost from land, The boats fan out. The fishermen’s nets go down Against the dawn wind lifting thin and higher, Then rise again and spread and sink and drown Till suddenly, as if by one great hand, They pull the sun up, setting the dark afire.

Neither the sea nor gulf have salty words To speak across the hot and slumberous day; Even the slow tides under the circling birds Make small half-hearted patterns and drift away. Within the high-walled garden dream the flowers: The red hibiscus with its tight shut eyes, The bougainvillea drowsing in scarlet showers Under the copper trellis of the skies. Above the tall poinsettias the allamanders Drop golden heads into their emerald leaves, And where the velvet blossoms of oleanders Lean heavy on the air a lone bird grieves Over a parching fountain white as lime. The sundial’s hands lie still, defying Time.