The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer.

A languid atmosphere, a lazy breeze, With labored respiration, moves the wheat From distant reaches, till the golden seas Break in crisp whispers at my feet.

Why all the embarrassment About being happy? Sometimes I’m as happy As a sleeping dog, And for the same reasons, And for others.

History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave Like a blue flower, In his beak he carries a silver leaf. I think this is the prettiest world – so long as you don’t mind a little dying.

Mosquito is out, It’s the end of the day; She’s humming and hunting Her evening away. Who knows why such hunger Arrives on such wings at sundown? I guess it’s the nature of things.

The fan beats back and forth, A lighthouse beacon made of wind. It spots you for a breath of time, then turns away, Leaving you in the dark of calm.

Sing in the silent sky, Glad soaring bird; Sing out thy notes on high To sunbeam straying by Or passing cloud; Heedless if thou art heard Sing thy full song aloud.

Everyone’s feeling pretty It’s hotter than July Though the world’s full of problems They couldn’t touch us even if they tried.

I am waiting for the day That maketh all things clear And I am awaiting retribution For what America did To Tom Sawyer And I am waiting For Alice in Wonderland.

In the summer I stretch out on the shore And think of you Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me.

Only a dad, but he gives his all To smooth the way for his children small, Doing, with courage stern and grim, The deeds that his father did for him.

The windows of a classroom always open To the future, but in our innocence we thought it was only landscape We were seeing from the window.

The rain streams down like harp-strings from the sky; The wind, that world-old harpist, sitteth by; And ever as he sings his low refrain, He plays upon the harp-strings of the rain.

Morning’s at seven; The hill-side’s dew-pearled; The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn; God’s in his Heaven — All’s right with the world!

may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone. For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea.

Early on I was hoping for a strike Of some huge striped bass to fight, But now, to hell with fishing, I would rather stand here casting.

The deepest-rooted dream of a tree is to walk Even just a little ways, from the place next to the doorway — To the edge of the river of life, and drink.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide.

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist, is to have knowledge of things that are as nearly eternal as any earthly life can be.