Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FLIGHTS, by CALE YOUNG RICE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FLIGHTS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: English herons brought for sport to a new land
Last Line: For worlds of outer space?
Subject(s): Explorers; Herons; Seashore; Exploring; Discovery; Discoverers; Beach; Coast; Shore


English herons brought for sport to a new land
Have bred here in pine-nests of the sea-marshes yearly
For more seasons than any man lives.
In the hot light of the June sun they flounce up squawking,
Then settle back on forks of the dead-tree branches --
While the tide beneath them ebbs and flows and sighs
Through channels of ooze hid in the dank silt-grasses.
Yet now no hoodless hawks hover to strike them:
That game is gone and the players of it forgotten
In sportless churchyards cresting the sea-granite.
But the greater game of a younger land usurps it:
Men wing in and out among the sunsets,
Or take off boldly at dawn like hovering herons
To span the Atlantic to hereditary shores.

Where is Leif Ericson? . . . Where is Columbus? . . .
In a few centuries more will the moon be a port of call
For worlds of outer space?





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