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Contemplative, Daniel Whitehead Hicky, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Savannah Waterfront

Like an old stevedore the harbor sleeps, The ships at anchor and the barges tied. Beyond the mist, a lone star, curious-eyed, Watches the hesitant darkness as it creeps In measured patterns till the marsh is one With sky and river and, far out, the sea — Lost now and lonely and no longer free, But bearing still the memory of sun. No husky voices rise to break the spell, No banjo throws a note across the night; Only the long slow wash of a drowsy river That fails to wake the throat of a buoy bell, Says requiem for a day that has ended forever In yellow periods of lantern light.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Sunset: Marsh Country

Over the marsh the wild birds go, White herons, blue mallards, the dark jackdaws; Singeing the west, the sun burns low. Now the swift-running tide withdraws, Pulling the grasses, shadow-stirred. Deep in the marsh slow fireflies light As silence like a stricken bird Circles and plunges through the night.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Autumn Pastoral

Like old men smacking dry lips over cider The leaves are tasting autumn in the air, And in low valleys where the hills stretch wider The smell of woodsmoke spirals slow and clear. Thin orchards yawn into the wind, their fruit Spent swiftly as the years have dropped away, And in the dangling silence a lone bee’s lute Stitches a yellow seam across the day. Where sumac ripens redder in the sun And goldenrod drifts pale, reluctant dust, Two lovers rise and walk the fields as one, Pledging eternal love with eager eyes, Blind to the swift year turning now to rust, The wild geese thundering south through blackening skies.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Island Fishermen: St. Simon's

With sunset now and ripening of the tide, The day’s bright catch a thing for memory, Fishermen bronze as nets the sun has dried Turn to a smaller doorway than the sea, Taking the dim streets in a motley crowd, Their salty words and laughter lifting higher, Leaving the gulls behind them in a cloud, The small boats rocking, arguing with the pier. Deserted and forgotten now with night The boats grow lonely like old fishermen, Knowing no voice, no flare of cigarette To break the darkness settling warm and plain, Only the echo of a wave’s far roar, A pale wind breathing silver to the shore.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Portrait in Sunlight

Within her garden now she sits and suns, Her life being over as surely as the last Death rattle of the rusted Confederate guns. Oblivious of time, or traffic past Her boxwood hedge, she knits away the hours; A robin twitters and with questioning eyes Observes her from the pear tree’s greening towers That tremble with his casual melodies. The village clock speaks with authority, Dividing afternoon with impartial hands; She does not hear; nor notice a butterfly Whose wings reflect the colors of her strands. She knits, and suddenly smiles, as though a wind Had stirred the secret lilacs of her mind.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

The Children in Autumn

They are unconcerned with autumn now, the children Playing beneath this sudden blazing of the maples. Autumn might just as well have come, for all they notice, To the far Pacific’s islands or the boulevards of Naples. I hear them playing loudly under the reddening myrtles The games they played when April captured the whitening park; Their signals are all the same and their laughing playmates even, But they do not see the embers of leaves that light the gathering dark. Autumn is fast upon us, but not for the eyes of the children. It is for us, their elders, who carry its name in our talk, Who sensed it before the turning of a maple leaf or the sumac, Before a scarlet cinder fell from the salvia’s stalk.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Child Watching a Snail

Within the garden’s close embrace, secure As though it were a world for you alone, I watch you ponder on the slow and sure Pathway a lone snail journeys to a stone. It takes an hour, you say, to pass a rose Kindling its fire beside the walk; a day To reach the gate a wind will never close; Nothing can quicken its slow, unhurried way. O child bewildered in the summer sun, Too swiftly, all too swiftly, all things pass: Bright stars at dusk, the evening’s moon, half-blown, Love, even love, like shadows on the grass. Censure it not, this snail with silver glow; Across your heart may Time move half as slow.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

The Secret

They cannot know a secret that I know, The city dwellers with their leaden eyes, Caught like a leaf in traffic’s ebb and flow, Deafened by all a city’s raucous cries; They cannot know it in the canyons there Where steel and stone deflect a mortal’s stare. For I arose before the moon went down, Half-way toward morning. Dew-wet lay the world, And, in the sunrise, brighter than the town. Deep in the valley’s hush I found uncurled A bloodroot flower; I touched it with my hand, And I alone know spring is on the land.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

A Snow So Wide

Whose prints these are across the snow I cannot say; I do not know. But journeying this path alone With silence on the heart like stone, I hope that I can overtake Him traveling through wind and flake, A lonely shadow in a night So brittle that it snaps with white Where fir and spruce and alder bend Beneath the fingers of the wind. I must catch him if I can And speak a word or two. No man Has eyes enough to witness all This blinding rush of petal-fall— A snow so deep, a snow so wide It takes a county in its stride,
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Beauty

No man has set his foot on any land But beauty’s steps have long preceded him, Nor climbed a mountain but her steady hand Has spread a cloud upon its highest rim. There is no burning desert man has taken Seeking the bones of men who have gone before, But to some far oasis his eyes awaken Discovering her earlier signature. Always a man must follow, like sparrows’ winging, The wild, clear winds of beauty down the earth, Find his own song an echo of her singing, His laughter but a pattern of her mirth; Find even upon the lips of love each day The light of dawn that he must kiss away.

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