Search

Search results

Contemplative, Daniel Whitehead Hicky, in English Clear filters

ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Snowscape with Figures

No winter-sharpened stars hang in the sky. This is a night of snowfall and the black Thick darkness crowding branches of the trees. No sound awakes the silence but the crack Of hemlocks where the snow piles white and deep, And soon their music through the ice-thin air Drifts into quiet of the frozen shadows Until another branch breaks suddenly clear. But there are stars deep in the forest’s reaches Where small and furry and half-frightened things Search through the crystal night for sustenance, And stars shine in the branches where trembling wings Quiet as snowfall fold into the dark. Through all the woods, down every path I go, The eyes of hunger kindle in the night
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Deer at the Edge of Dawn

Surprised as though I were the sun An hour ahead of dawn, Two small deer drinking at a stream Looked up, and plunged head on Into a thicker ledge of leaves Than I had parted there, Making green music in the forest. Through the early air They leapt in rhythms I could hear For many acres’ space Until each twig snapped back again, Each leaf regained its place. I stood bewildered for a time Half as frightened as they, But this I knew: the delicate Green music of that day
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Iris Are Not for Children

Iris are not for children laughing, playing, Nor jonquils with their cups of yellow fire. These colors belong to April and the old Whose veins no longer blossom with desire, Whose years are measured out like raindrops dripping Slower and slower from an April briar. Leave summer roses to the children’s fingers, The scent of lilies through the August night; They are concerned with these far more than April For summer is the season of delight When meadows ripen and a bluebird’s pattern Shadows a sea of daisies hot and white. Iris are not for children, nor the jonquils. On any day in spring you may see the old Clasping at these first flowers as though they held The last fragment of April they shall hold,
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

December Night

Through all this frozen night there is no sound Save my white footsteps on a whiter ground, No stir up from the meadow, nor the brake Lost in the whitening wind beyond the lake. How soft the lamps come on, their sudden gold Shining from windows warming up the cold; How pale the trees, how bowed their branches down With loveliness men cannot see in town. But hush, and listen! Above this stretch of white, This swirl of snow that blinds me like a light, I hear a slow sound plain and high and far,— The wind’s cold fingers polishing a star.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Orchard Skies

I have known skies where Egypt’s burning sands Gave back more bronze and heat than sunset gave, From tall Sicilian cliffs watched night’s dark hands Plunge a young moon into the sea’s wide grave, And from the shore of China when desire Had caught and doomed me like a prisoner, Watched the slow east burst suddenly into fire Lighting the day with red and lavender. These were great skies that I could not behold More than a miserly moment before they had fled, But when my orchards shake off winter’s cold I can reach up and touch them where they spread Bright heavens trembling petal-pale and proud, And break a bough, and keep it, like a cloud.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

August Garden: Key West

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.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Georgia Summer

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.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Snowfall After Dark

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.
ContemplativeDaniel Whitehead Hicky

Never the Nightingale

Never the nightingale shall haunt this marsh Where the gray herons and the white, Feathered with moonlight, ride the secret reaches Of the night. Never the heartbreak of the nightingale Shall halt this salty wind— Only the herons crying, always crying Brief music pale and thinned, Shall fly, triumphant, over the making tidals White and clear When the slow darkness nibbles at the grasses Like a young deer. My heart is long attuned to this wild crying, The loneliness that stretches like a wave Where the gray oaks count out the centuries. I am not brave

Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem

Or try: