Then let my skeleton soul</br>Writhe upward from its loam,</br>Drink red morning again,</br>And look gently home. - Donald Davidson

Then no soft arms could hold me from my wilderness </br>To reap at daylight's fallow edge, with bullet or knife,</br>That flicker of hoof or pelt, that flash of wings returning -</br>The dogs trace it - harvest of life that gives me life.

Why did my father write? I know he saw</br>History clutched as a wraith out of blowing mist</br>Where tongues are loud, and a glut of little souls</br>Laps at the too much blood and the burning house.

Father remembered the wild pigeons crowding</br>Beech groves, mast-rich. The flutter in boughs, the cloud</br>Darkening all, a hurricane circling and surging.</br>Eye lost count, ear could not measure sound.</br>Mind hurled measureless with them, feathered the sky.