The restless leaves like pounding surf Sound breakers through the trees. I strip of all reality And drown myself in these. _WHEN KILMER WROTE OF TREES_ When Kilmer wrote of trees he must have seen The flowering catalpas all a-bloom, And though about him guns spoke quick of death And distant cannon thundered oaths of doom He did not harken. What were all of these To where beyond the trenches stood the trees? _WILD GEESE_ Geese in the night flying low, I hear the beat of their wings. I wish that I could know If they are calling to me. Rain and a wintry wind And trees that have shed their leaf. If man at first had not sinned Then Christ had not been born. _I WRITE TO YOU IN RED_ I write to you in red, though not in blood, For scarlet all my memories are dyed With deep imaginings of what the past, The past, the past--the unforgotten gone. Ah, what it might have been designed upon! I write to you in red because the flood Of scarlet passion prisoned, long denied Your love, yet in your bondage bonded fast, Is freed to flow again, to stream, And if it can, another love esteem. But all too long your chains upon my heart Have left a scar which testifies me dead To all frivolity. I have no part With lightsome love. I write to you in red! _’TIS WINTER NOW_ When spring again revisits earth, And in the dark there comes a stirreth Of seedlings bursting with the birth Of summer’s future flowers, Then will I sing you songs of love And apple blossoms branched above Shall know the dear devotion of My poor poetic powers. But wait till then--’tis winter now. My thoughts in solitude are claimed. Yet every wind shall hear my vow Repeated through the hours, It’s you alone I love, And unashamed. _SONNET_ Like solitary mountain peaks that list And seem to sink in seas of restless grain My love for you goes drowning through a mist Of unrequited, unrecorded pain. Oh, while there’s breath of life and passion still, While yet remains a warmth, a failing flame Within the fallen fortress of my will, Give me a moment of your love to claim. Come let me hold you close in hushed embrace And crush you with the force of fierce desire, Yet by that love no future plan to trace, But just to love that moment to conspire. I will not chain you, though enchained by thee; The memory of your love will prison me. _THE TROPIC DAWN_ The tropic dawn is beautiful at sea, The clouds respond so readily to light. Though overhead the stars continue bright And scattered like a broken string of beads, The eastward doors of night are opened wide And light floods all the ocean floor inside.