Nathalia Crane

Across the downs a hummingbird Came dipping through the bowers, He pivoted on emptiness To scrutinize the flowers.

In the darkness, who would answer for the color of a rose, Or the vestments of the May moth and the pilgrimage it goes?

The world is growing gentle, But few know what she owes To the understanding lily And the judgment of the rose.

Lo and behold! God made this
starry wold,
The maggot and the mold; lo and
behold!
He taught the grass contentment
blade by blade,
The sanctity of sameness in a shade.

A single-motored miracle, a lead mine on each flank; Below a shadow swept and awed the hundred-fathom bank.

Oh I'm in love with the janitor's boy, And the janitor's boy loves me; He's going to hunt for a desert isle In our geography.

I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine. But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.

You cannot choose your battlefield,
God does that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew. <small> QOTD 2007·11·01 Sound file </small>

Treating the sword blade the same as the staff, Turning the chariot wheel into chaff. Toppling a pillar and nudging a wall, Building a sand pile to counter each fall. Yielding to nothing — not even the rose, The dust has its reasons wherever it goes.

Let go the lure The striving to unmake; Behold the truth Whenever heart may ache There is a glory In a great mistake.

He'll carry me off, I know that he will, For his hair is exceedingly red; And the only thing that occurs to me Is to dutifully shiver in bed.

Oh, we have had great lovers that we followed to the pyre; Our boasts out-do the Sabine girls—the Mosque of St. Sophia. And we are very sure of ours, for when a city falls, They seize us and they love us and they hurl us from the walls.

You cannot choose your battlefield,
God does that for you;
But you can plant a standard
Where a standard never flew.

(From The Colors)

Great is the rose Infected by the tomb, Yet burgeoning Indifferent to death.

A thousand ardent oilers swung the long spout 'twixt their nods, And tried to glimpse a meaning in the challenge of the gods. And then one night there landed on a Mineola swale A plane that looked like pewter, with a carrier of mail. Its wings were tinged like tea-box skins, each truss of shadow gray, Its cabin but an alcove slung beneath a metal ray. The Spirit of St. Louis was inscribed upon the lee; It came from out a province that had never seen the sea.