Bye-bye sweet stumps these driftwoods I hefted and rolled from the shore up along The trail then heaved them onto my deck And placed them just so that in the evening We can sit there to watch the sun go down. Pebbles hammered by the breakers into their Endgrain , wood polished at the shore To a dull opalescence. We look across The tiger-lilies burning orange, through Red-berried showy mountain ash, across Serviceberry, chokecherry, pin cherry, Raspberry and blackberry, primrose Purple orchis woven through sapling Fir and spruce, spotted jopi weed and pale Violet fireweed stitched into the mix. Goldenrod, white everlastings, we are such Fools to name them all; but I’ll never Disregard the gooseberry, the pinnacled Dogwood, the homely alder, patches Of fern, and threatenings of thistle.
From here we can look through a shifting Web of ravens, and gulls, the threadings Of marshhawk, bald eagle drapes into A fabric of white-throated sparrow And song-sparrow and bunting and yellow Warbler and hummingbird and grosbeak And finch and all the rest. He soars Above the tiny piping plover, sandpiper, terns and gannets and kittiwakes Among the great blue herons out to sea Where the sun sets behind the pilot whales That baste a stitch across the calm And the fishermen out to take a cup of rum In their boats as the sun goes down, An ecstasy of lavender and green. We sit In a bathing of names spectacular we are On these stumps. Bye-bye sweet stumps.
