Here where the trees still tremble with your flight
I sit and braid thin whips to beat you down.
How shall we ever find you who have gone
In little dresses, lisping through the town?

Great men on horses hunt you and strong boys
Employ their arrows in the shallow air.
But I shall be heard whistling where I follow
Braiding long wisps of grass and stallion’s hair.

And in the night when thirty hawks are high
In pendent rhythm, and all the wayside loud;
When they are the burning field and bush and hedge,
I’ll steal you like a penny from the crowd.



 = Heather C. Liston