"Turn to page ten in your arithmetics." Rustle of yellow pages like a snake Among old leaves. The small boy tries to make His mind go through its jumbled bag of tricks. But how can he lay hands on eight times six When mountains fill the window and a lake Nudges his dreams, when autumn and the ache Of color, noon, and the numbers meet and mix? Puzzled, he asks the tree-tops, but the sun Covers his desk with blots and yellow scrawls. A woodchuck mocks him. If he had a gun! Last year he brought down two of them. The walls Dissolve. Vague thoughts bemuse him, one by one, As numberless and nameless as their calls. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FOREFATHERS by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN AFTER WINTER by STERLING ALLEN BROWN ROBERT E. LEE by JULIA WARD HOWE SONGS ON THE VOICES OF BIRDS; SEA-MEWS IN WINTER TIME by JEAN INGELOW HEATHER ALE: A GALLOWAY LEGEND by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON THE FUGITIVE by LAWRENCE ALMA-TADEMA |