A road-runner dodged through the chaparral, As a coin will slip through the hand of a wizard, A black wasp droned by his sun-baked cell, While flat on his stone lay a sun-baked lizard. A shy quail lowered his crested head 'Neath the rock-lined sweep of a dry creek-bed. A sage hen scratched 'neath a cactus spike, While high in the sky was the noon-sun's glamor; And, ready as ever rose anvil strike, Came the rat-tat-tat of a yellowhammer. A wolf in the cleft of a sycamore, Sat gray as a monk at his Mission door. Out of the earth a tarantula crept On its hairy legs, to the road's white level, With eyes where a demon's malice slept, And the general air of a devil; And a rattlesnake by the dusty trail Lay coiled in a mat of mottled scale. The wolf down sprang on the sage hen there, The lizard snapped at the wasp and caught him. The spider fled to his sheltering lair As if a shadowy foeman sought him; The road-runner slipped through the roadside brake And dashed his beak through the rattlesnake. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: LAMBERT HUTCHINS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS CAMPUS SONNET: TALK by STEPHEN VINCENT BENET ETERNITY BLUES by HAYDEN CARRUTH A SUMMER'S GARDEN by ROBERT FROST POSTHUMOUS by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON THE STORM by KATHERINE MANSFIELD WHEN I WAS A BIRD by KATHERINE MANSFIELD SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: MRS. CHARLES BLISS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |