'The Field' and Other Poems

The Field

The field was more a painting than a field,
the flowers oily in their despairing freshness

and, beyond, the scumble of jack pines,
the thumbed portion of stream. Along the stone wall,

a child's version of a wall, shocks of knee-grass
rose like lightning. We might have lived

in some summer-watercolorist's summer,
the afternoon like other afternoons

gathering in that field, arguing with that sky,
as if there were nothing to be done.



326 Frederick Street

This building, standing as it does on a hill, can look out all
over the city and into every man's face and say, 'I am an
honest building, my bills are all paid.'
...