The School on the Hill

And do you remember those years long ago
When we trudged through the mud and the deeply piled snow
To that little old schoolhouse just over the hill?
(I went back last summer and found it there still.)
I think you remember that kindly old man
Who taught all those years. Now recall if you can
The Halloween prank that the boys played on him--
Wheels changed on his buggy--his hand long and slim
He waved in farewell as he drove on his way
Calling, "My! This old carriage is wobbling today."
Remember the songs that he taught us to sing?
(A master musician) The echoes still ring
And resound in that silent and hallowed old room
That now is untouched by a duster or broom.

Remember the morals he told us about?
That we should speak softly, not roughly; nor shout;
That we could live simply yet walk with the great;
That fame often entered a small country gate;
"Opportunity knocks on a worthy man's door;
For Abraham Lincoln was humble, yet wore
The badge of distinction through hard honest work."
And we could do likewise if we would not shirk
But answer the challenge for growth in our town.

The boys of that class are now men of renown;
The girls who once charmed with their sweet country grace
Are dignified matrons who mother the race.
The world may not know of that school on the hill,
The dreams it awakened in Nellie and Will,
But folks will be better because it was there.
The floors are now sagging, the old room is bare,
The plaster is falling--the years bring decay,
But its soul lingers on and is living today.
The songs and the lessons it taught in the past,
The virtues and beauties, forever, will last.

The American Bard

Dusk and a Star

Sleep, oh, my little one,
Sleep while a dream is spun--
                Dusk and a star.

Hush! Hear the veery cry
Fluting a lullaby
Closing your drowsy eye--
                Dusk and a star.

Saffron, the moon from some
Port where the angels hum--
                Bells from afar ...
Gently the shadows come--
                Dusk and a star!

Plowing

I watch the west field being plowed today:
My grandson rides the tractor leisurely.
Viewing the fresh-turned furrows of black clay,
Through dim, nostalgic eyes I seem to see
His grandpa walking there behind the plow
The lines about his neck; his sleek bay team
Plodding with labored breath. I listen now
Longing to hear the seagull's strident scream,
The robins bugling, and the mating lark
Playing in ecstasy his silver flute
Above the rhythmic noise--Then hark! Oh, hark!
Comes startled silence. With the tractor mute,
Song fills the air! My grandson wears a frown--
His grandpa's team would never have broke down!

No Robot Task

The spirit of the land grew strong in him,
Became the very essence of his soul.
At seedtime and at harvest he would brim
With joy. He gently drove the mare with foal
Before the plow, one of his shining team,
Or pulling swaying loads of meadow hay.
Often he paused while driving through the stream
To let the thirsty horses drink. When day
Was gently closed by one clear killdeer-note,
He viewed the stars above the fields of wheat--
God and the land were his, and from his throat
A prayer ascended through air country-sweet.
No robot task to dwarf his mind and limb,
The spirit of the land grew strong in him.

Return

Returning, we drive through a quiet lane
Bordered by chokecherries, a wild rose hedge;
Remembering, are children once again
Until our car comes to the river's edge.
We stop and long for white-top-buggy days
With Nell and King to pull us through the stream.
Walking the footbridge every creak betrays
The weight of years. Nostalgically we dream
With misty eyes of joys we knew before
We left the homestead. Now we hesitate,
Yearning to see our mother at the door,
Our father waiting by the open gate.

Did You Answer, Mary?

In your Gethsemane,
Although it seemed your heart would break,
Did not His "fallen sparrow" touch your soul;
And fields of lilies with their peace extoll
Heaven's care? Did words of life He spake
Illumine Calvary?

Beside the cross, you saw your Son made whole,
And felt death's gyves begin to quake?
The Easter melody
You heard? Triumphantly,
The angels sang: "He sleeps to wake,
Not thorns but LIGHT OF LIFE His aureole!"?

Easter Pilgrimage

Oh, come with me and journeying by a star
Upon a pilgrimage, in lands afar
Kneeling with Mary, hear the angel's voice,
             (An empty tomb)
             "Rejoice! Rejoice!"

Then hush! Oh, hush! and breathe triumphant air.
And dry your tears! The earth is lily-fair,
The glow of life illuming by His grace.
             Let paeans ring.
             Behold His face!

O, come with me and journeying by a star
Behold the risen Lord, and cry, "You Are!"

Easter Song

The lilies whisper,
"Hush! On, hush!
The Master is sleeping!"
Be still, glad thrush.
O night winds send
From your muted throat
Your cooling breath--
Bid it curve and float
Singing a silent requiem
While the Master sleeps--
An Easter crown, His diadem.

The grasses murmur,
Lilies weep,
"The Master is gone!"
Where He lay asleep
Only the shroud
He wore is left.
Then an angel's voice,
"Be not bereft,
The Master is risen!
Behold Thy Lord!"
O, dawn winds sing
A triumphant chord!

The Master, smiling,
With infinite grace
Caresses a lily's
Pure white face.

The Poesy Book

Autumn Easter Song

Listen:
Autumn dropping
Tomorrows from oak trees;
Whispering, "April!" in golden
Kernels.

Where Robins Call

Through city-sounds, I hear the new green word
That April in the country speaks. Joy-stirred,
I swift-wing back where robin bugles call
And larks release a splashing waterfall
Of melody to crystal-thread the dawn.
I watch the sunrise spill pale gold upon
A white hawk wheeling low against the blue.
The requiem of mourning doves tolls through
The wrens small chatterings. Then hush! Oh, hush!
Canary lyrics frill the willow brush
And fringe the hawthorne. Low-contralto clear
A killdeer-Angelus chimes, "God is near."
Prophetic are symphonic canticles
From fields, fresh-furrowed, blossoming with gulls.

Bronze Hour

From winter's crystal castle through the door
March left ajar, blond April trips again,
Calling to sleeping streams and trees before

She emerald-carpets all her glad domain.
What joy to hear the laughter of the hills,
The singing of the prairies through the rain!

The golden goblets of the daffodils
Hold spring's cologne. The lark sends from his flute
A fount of splashing stars in cadenced trills.

Filled with a beauty-ecstasy, as mute
And motionless I stand at the bronze hour
Of dawn, my heart-songs silently salute,

In awe, the Great Creator. By His power
The sun bursts forth, a blinding amber flower.

Silver Web

Dear Granny's voice held flute-tones bright as dawn,
"Call not the spider's weaving gray, my child,
But a shining silver web an artist styled.
Come, you must put my star-rimmed glasses on

To see a crocus thrusting through the clod;
A lilac blossom with an April breeze
Light-dancing a ballet; view emerald seas
Of meadows daisy-crested, not mere sod."

A silver web of beauty! Granny's art
I came to understand. As years sped swift
The common place illumed when I would lift
My eyes and see with vision of the heart.

To Granny's garden walled by crumbling stone
I have returned, and through nostalgic tears
I view the silver web spun by the years
For I have star-rimmed glasses of my own.

When Autumn Flames

I watch the autumn flame from bush to tree
And wish I were a child again as fleet
As the young doe, yet all regrets are sweet
For still I hold the springtime's ecstasy.
May each one find his autumn ripe with truth
To garner for his need before the frost,
Yet hold the singing April of his youth.

Young Alchemists

I was but one of ten young alchemists
Who blended toil with laughter into play;
Who always held their April beauty-trysts
With violets and drank from the Milky-Way;
Who knew how straight and tall a pine could grow
Upon a sloping hill though reaching high;
Who often rose at dawn to stand tiptoe
Upon a youthful dream to touch the sky;
Who knelt around the circled chairs at night
And talked with God; in morning knelt again,
Then labored joyously within His light
And found Him in the fields of grain. These ten
Now silver-haired and far from homestead sod,
Still hold a rendezvous with joy and God.

To Leave A Beauty Shrine

Think April thoughts and keep her youthful eyes;
Drink wine of summer; clasp the autumn's hand,
Then joy in winter's stars and ice-blue skies
When crystal castles glorify the land.
Feel June returning in December's breath.
Kneel at faith's alter--You are not alone--
Love, and illume the face of life and death.
Shove gently would you move an anger-stone.
Live every day as though it were your last.
Give freely of your warm heart-minted gold;
Care more for man, forgetting creed or caste.
Wear robes of dawn, nor mind the growing old.
Weave on the loom of life, a work of art--
Leave one more beauty-shrine when you depart.

The Miracle

Travail is over--Autumn calmly kneeling
In robes of flame before the harvest-shrine
Beholds her garnered largess of the vine
And root. Earth, weary, waits the silent healing
Of ermined-rest. Within the withered pod
October holds young April, dormant, clinging--
After my harvest-song, let me hear ringing
Of far-off bells of life nor mind the clod.
With beauty filmed throughout the years unreeling,
May I, all unafraid, see the design
Of earth and Heaven blend; with mellowed singing
Await the miracle of death ... and God.

Disciplined by Loveliness

I have companioned with the lovely things
and walked with beauty
in the many springs
that I have known. Then in my heart
when autumn winds have shrieked
their lullabies,
I have felt April zephyrs
and watched new tendrils rise.
In winter's sculptured silence--
the artistry of snow--
I have heard beneath earth's crystal crust
the green things grow
and speak in syllables of spring
each lovely thing.

So when I hear my last shrill
autumn wind,
I shall recall a little hill
purpling with violets, and disciplined
by loveliness-recurrent, I shall rest--
like a blown leaf content
on earth's sweet breast--
and wait the wonderment,
the miracle of bird-song ... whirring wings ...
For always, always, there will be
the lovely things.

The Returned

(Dedicated to Healers of the Mind)

How new to her the sun-up ray--
I heard her softly speak His name.
Along the hyacinthine way
Of morning-wonderment she came.

Her eyes, when they were turned on me,
Were April violets, first-seen;
Her voice a pristine psalmody
That curved through blossom-fronded green.

"A miracle!" she cried--her eye
Swift-following a bluebird's flight
Until it blended with the sky--
"This rising day, renascent-bright!"

Her arms up-spread, she sang, "I know
The triumph over death and stone!
I breathe the breath these gardens blow,
Their living song, my own!"

Again she spoke His name ... I knew
To her returned from mind-dark tomb,
The sky was resurrection-blue
Above the white of lily-bloom.

Even in Silence

Loneliness is an old man alone--
Long past fourscore, the venerable ancient
Lived in silence of solitude.
Forty years of loneliness,
Forth years since he had placed his Marie
To rest beneath the great pine she loved,
Under whose sheltering arms
The two had often sat together
In the quietude of companionship.
Compassion stirred the apathetic embers of my heart:
Kindled, I visited him.

"Lonely?" He echoed my question--
His eyes lifted to mine were like April violets
Beneath the blossom-white snow of his hair;
And his voice held the lyrics of a little river
Released from the boundaries of winter--
"No, my dear, not lonely,
Today the psalmist David has comforted me."

The Merry Horsemen Ride

Warm April fingers tap my window pane,
And April-footsteps patter on my roof.
Bright golden goblets fill with crystal rain.
The merry horsemen ride! Each magic hoof
Sends silver music echoing to the hills
Whose greening carpets are retrimmed with dock.
Ecstatically, a joyous lark-flute spills
A fount of jeweled blaze, but not to mock
The phoebe's gentle flare, but to express
A lilting rapture which cannot be stilled.
Ripples of youth, of springtime tenderness
Flow from my heart once more. My dreams fulfilled
Again I walk through valleys, lily-fair,
Hearing the call of beauty everywhere.

The Relief Society Magazine

To the Shrine of Our Birth

Ten of us grew, each a young alchemist
Blending our laughter with toil into play;
Drinking in awe from the sky's Milky Way;
Holding in April, a violet-tryst.
Seeing how pines reaching high could resist
Hurricane wrath and grow taller each day,
Stately we grew to touch God; knelt to pray
Talking with Him night and morning. Joy-kissed,
Working in wheat field, we found He was there.
Often at dawn we were standing tiptoe
Mounting a dream while the mysteries of earth
Challenged our daring--When lark-anthemed air
Calls, "It is April!" still ten of us go,
Silvered and tall, to the shrine of our birth.

My Heart Has Built a Hill

"I will return in April," I had said,
"To see the Mountain Bluebells wreathe this hill
With azure garlands." As the years swift-sped,
I could not leave my city-tasks but still
With the first crocus I would pledge anew
Watching the skeins of geese in northward flight.
Yet every April found me smiling through
Nostalgic tears for meadows clover-white
And greening mountains. I would ache to hear
Wind through the aspens and the night hawk's cry.
I could not be denied the stars so near
That I could pick them from my hilltop sky.
So now each springtime, though I cannot go,
I climb a greening hill where bluebells grow.

She Is My Friend

(To Georgia Perry)

She is my friend: The music of the words
Has power to release the silver birds
Of song within my throat. My thoughts kneel down
Before the poetry of One whose crown
Of peace she wears. My risen dreams annul
The pirate years. Again the miracle
Within my heart ... And my grief's barren sod
Blossoms with beauty of the grace of God.

She is my friend, for when I walk with her
She leads me to the Healing Gardener:
Gone are pain's tethers ... I hear April pass
Singing His love in rain upon the grass.
She knows my need for April nor forgets
To weave a lei of her word-violets.
My friend who, when December snows are falling,
With new green words brings me a robin calling!

Miracle of Late Love

As one who leaves a shadow-darkened room
To face the blinding glory of the sun,
I shade my eyes: I cannot bear the bloom
Of April suddenly now March is done.
A thrush-flute spills a joy not heard before
In other springs; a brighter crocus peeps
Above the snow since you unbarred the door
My heart had closed on dreams within its deeps.

You came: I felt the April-Miracle--
The triumph over death ... Because of you
The stone gives way; my risen dreams annul
The years of storm; skies are renascent blue!
You brought the April with her gentle wind
To me whose heart had been March-disciplined.

Pioneer Granny

Pioneer Granny was fragile and old
And crippled with gout in the winter's cold,
But her tongue was unsharpened by pain: She would say,
"I'm waiting for April to come my way.
When a bluebird tips his hat to me
And calls 'Hello!' I'll be out! You'll see!"

While waiting for April--no sighs or regrets--
She wove us a lei of her word-violets.
Here stories brought stars to our wondering eyes--
Dear Granny, so near to her loved Paradise!

She came to this valley when she was a bride,
Crossing the plains with her John by her side.
She lived in a dugout but never was poor
With Sweet Williams blossoming by her door.

She helped build their cabin on sage-burdened loam
Then lovingly fashioned the spirit of home
Where patience intoned every word that she said;
Where she rested at night on a prayer-sweet bed.

She dreamed of a church and a school on the hill,
A store and broad roads ... toiled with neighbors until
The dream was fulfilled. (When she traveled by car--
No snow-plodding oxen--her dreams touched a star.)

She welcomed her babies, eleven she bore.
Reminiscing, she told us, "That was before
We boasted a doctor in this untamed land,
But I managed somehow by holding God's hand

And that of my John"--Her eyes lit with tears
Recalling the joy of those pioneer years.
Again she was feeling John's tender embrace
With all Heaven mirrored in each baby face.

"Divorce was unknown in our pioneer world
For wives were contented with wee fingers curled
Tight-clinging to theirs. The work of their hands--
Love's toil--left no time for dissolving the bands
Of marriage and home." She smiled at us then,
"Forgive me for preaching."--Eyes twinkled
     ... "Amen!"

Granny churned butter, made cheese, soap and lye,
Spun yarn and wove cloth; said, "My dears, if you try,
You can do likewise. I'll teach you someday."
But Pioneer Granny too soon went away.

She was waiting for April: Again with her cane
She would hobble outside forgetting her pain;
Like a brave little crocus or flashing blue wing,
Adorn with her brightness the portrait of spring.

She was waiting for April: She smiled at those near
Then closed her eyes saying, "I'll rest till I hear
A bluebird in Heaven call from the skies,
'Come, little Granny! It's April! Arise!' "

So Pioneer Granny went Home to her rest,
But her spirit is here in the valley she blessed.

How Granny Loved April!

Gran, who was little and fragile and old
And crippled with gout
In the winter's cold,
Her tongue unsharpened by pain, would say,
"I'm waiting for April to come my way.
When a bluebird tips his hat to me
And calls, 'Hello!' I'll be out, you'll see."

How Granny loved April! when with her cane
She would hobble outside
Forgetting her pain.
Like a brave little crocus or flashing blue wing,
She adorned with her brightness the portrait of spring.

Last winter Gran left us: She smiled at those near
Then closed her eyes saying,
"I'll rest till I hear
A bluebird in Heaven call from the skies,
'Come, little Granny! It's April! Arise!'"

How Deep the April Mud

The ghost of laughter
Haunts remembered rain-green April moments
When April violins were singing.
The moon-hung mystery of night
Brings no enchantment to weary soldiers.
Weighted with dead dreams, they say,
"How deep the April mud!"

Montana Poetry Quarterly

Eternal April

Autumn
Holds April
Dormant, clinging,
In the root and pod--
Eternal spring
In the arms
Of death.

Where April Sings Forever

When I am old and years have brought their gray,
Let me still walk a garden path with love
Remembering fire-opaled yesterday,
Seeing the white-winged gulls of hope above;
Where dreams still lingering an accolade,
Recall the lilac song-gifts I have known,
The tribute which the robins gladly paid,
The wealth of beauty every soul may own.
In this loved garden, let my heart by young--
Years may enhance the lilting power to sing.
Perhaps my sweetest song is yet unsung
So bid me feel the springtime burgeoning.
But let me stroll a garden where time's lever
Moves on, yet April sings in hearts forever.

April Calls

April calls afar,
Crystal lanes, each brittle star
Become a vanished art.

Spinning lilied looms,
Emerald carpets sprigged with blooms
Invite the errant heart.

Joy-adventuresome
Silver birches shyly strum
Their harps with artifice.

Age-old feet slow-creep,
But pulsing sap bids old hearts leap
With youth at April's kiss.