Ant
Miniature mountaineer
A stalk of grass
A new adventure
Futuristic forager
Supplying for
The greater body
Terrific tunnerler
Expanding and growing
The home
Solid solder
Welcomed home
In pride
Quintessential queen
Living in the glory
Of the nest
Poems on the topic: nest
Poems on the topic “nest” on Poets.by.
The Exposed Nest
You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
In the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ’twas no make-believe with you to-day,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clover.
’Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasting flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
Terrified of Them
Terrified of them she was through long
Experience being swarmed with stings,
Running, her hands over eyes and mouth,
Running to the house or jumping in the lake,
In whatever way possible to stop the punishers.
For years, she made herself their nemesis
In revenge, setting nests afire! Or in
Evenings inverting a glass bowl upside
Down over their holes to watch them starve.
Only in recent years, as her ways have slowed,
Finding in books their part in the scheme of
Things as helpers in garden and orchard,
Has she learned to move more gently
Even as they light on her cidery hands,
Milking fingers for juice, never stinging.
Fallen
Thistledown woven
spider-net
abandoned nest
a cup
upturned
under the wrong tree
light as breath
hedge-fallen
gloveback
nature retrieves
her mess of twigs
grasses
meticulously
bit-by-bit
In wind
In liquid air.
The Unfaithful April
I saw a robin last year,
I heard him fill his throat
High in the trembling elm tree
With note on gallant note.
So splendidly his red breast
Went flashing in the dew,
I thought beneath his glad wings
His heart had broken through.
I hear the robin this year,
His voice is sweet and strong,
But I can not give him welcome
Nor listen to his song.
How can he bear the new leaves
Around his last year's nest?
How can he sing with old wounds
Still red upon his breast?
Three Island Songs 1
After the wind in the wood,
Peace, and the night.
After the bond and the brood,
Flight.
After the height and the hush
Where the wild hawk swings,
Heart of the earth-loving thrush
Shaken with wings.
After the bloom and the leaf
Rain on the nest.
After the splendour and grief,
Rest.
After the hills and the far
Glories and gleams,
Cloud, and the dawn of a star,
And dreams.
When I Was a Bird
I climbed up the karaka tree
Into a nest all made of leaves
But soft as feathers.
I made up a song that went on singing all by itself
And hadn’t any words, but got sad at the end.
There were daisies in the grass under the tree.
I said just to try them:
“I’ll bite off your heads and give them to my little children to eat.”
But they didn’t believe I was a bird;
They stayed quite open.
The sky was like a blue nest with white feathers
And the sun was the mother bird keeping it warm.
That’s what my song said: though it hadn’t any words.
Little Brother came up the patch, wheeling his barrow.
I made my dress into wings and kept very quiet.
Then when he was quite near I said: “Sweet, sweet!”
Winter Sleep
When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone and steel,
When snow turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.
Little birds like bubbles of glass
Fly to other Americas,
Birds as bright as sparkles of wine
Fly in the night to the Argentine,
Birds of azure and flame-birds go
To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:
They chase the sun, they follow the heat,
It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet!
You Will Not Come Again
The green has come to the leafless tree,
The earth brings forth its grain ;
The rose has come for the honey bee :
You will not come again.
The birds have come to the empty nest,
All winter full of rain ;
Music has come where the silence was :
You will not come again.
Love swift will come for the weak lambs' cry ;
Ah for my heart's dull pain !
Lone in the cycle of change am I :
You will not come again.
A Girl in Summer
She took the summer to her blood
Through her sweet mouth.
Until her sleepy mood
Was warm as sunny walls of the old south.
It seemed the yellow light
Had fruitful powers,
Beneath her bosom's white
Leapt sudden flowers.
Each round as the breast
From whose dear core it sprang,
And in the middle of each flower a nest,
In which a young bird sang;
Sang for joy of a coming
And for joy of a name,
And the petals of the flower
Leapt like flame.
Lines: 'When the Lamp Is Shattered'
When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead--
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken,
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot.
As music and splendour
Survive not the lamp and the lute,
The heart's echoes render
No song when the spirit is mute:--
No song but sad dirges,
Like the wind through a ruined cell,
Or the mournful surges
That ring the dead seaman's knell.
Easter Day
The silver trumpets rang across the Dome:
The people knelt upon the ground with awe:
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea,
And sought in vain for any place of rest:
'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.'
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