For eyes he waves greentipped taut horns of slime. They dipped, hours back, across a reef, a salmonberry leaf. Then strained to grope past fin of spruce. Now eyes suck in as through the hemlock butts of his day's ledge there cuts a vixen chipmunk. Stilled is he—green mucus chilled, or blotched and soapy stone, pinguid in moss, alone. Hours on, he will resume his silver scrawl, illume his palimpsest, emboss his diver's line across that waving green illim- itable seafloor. Slim young jay his sudden shark; the wrecks he skirts are dark and fungussed firlogs, whom spirea sprays emplume, encoral. Dew his shell, while mounting boles foretell of isles in dappled air fathoms above his care. Azygous muted life, himself his viscid wife, foodward he noses cold beneath his sea. So spends a summer's jasper century. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AT DOVER CLIFFS, JULY 20, 1787 by WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES THE MASTER-PLAYER by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR GEORGE MOSES HORTON, MYSELF by GEORGE MOSES HORTON THE HOLLY TREE by ROBERT SOUTHEY VIRGILS GNAT by EDMUND SPENSER |