Nature Poet

1. Voices
Peering for clues in dust on a brown moth's wings,
Touching white doors and greening stones in a wall.
Pondering lichen shapes and lines in his nail,
He liked all the people he could and, more than is usual,
Cherished his dead, thought often of them, because they were still.

But bewildered he was, more and more: enamoured of Things
Because they contained a patience and a waiting.
His voices clamoured for clarity: 'All would be easing
If only you'd stop watching trees. Their way of standing'
His voices insisted, 'is their way of teasing.'

He bad-temperedly argued; the voices were his soul,
Nine-cheerful-tenths of it, and gazing got him nowhere;
Stroking the hair of barley, hanging on to a chair
...