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Smallest wing no shift ofa flight-grain nothing Nothing. Let us go in, son, and listen For some tobaccomumbling voice in the branches to say "That's a little better," to our lives still hanging By a hair. There is nothing to stop us we can go Deep deeper into elms, and listen to traffic die Roaring, like a football crowd from which we have Vanished. Dead coaches live in the air, son live In the ear Like fathers, and u1'l!e and u1'l!e. They want you better Than you are. When needed, they rise and curse you they scream When something must be saved. Here, under this tree, We can sit down. You can sleep, and I can try To give back what I have earned by keeping us Alive, and safe from bees: the smile ofsome kind OfsaviorOftouchdowns , offumbles, battles, Lives. Let me sit here with you, son As on the bench, while the first string takes back Over, far away and say with my silentest tongue, with the mancreating bruises ofmy arms with a live leafa quick Dead hand on my shoulder, "Coach Norton, I am your boy." Mary Sheffield Forever at war news I am thinking there nearly naked low green ofwater hard overflowed forms water sits running quietly carving red rocks forcing white from the current parts ofmidstream join I sit with one hand joining the other hand shyly fine sand under still feet and Mary Sheffield singing passed-through Mary Sheffield / 277 sustained in the poured forms oflive oaks taking root in the ~ast tracks ofleft and right foot river flowing into my mind nearly naked the last day but one before world war. When the slight wind dies each leafstill has two places such music touched alive guitar strings sounds join In the stone's shoal ofswimming the best twigs I have the best sailing leaves in memory pass threading through all things spread sail sounds gather on blunt stone streaming white E minor gently running I sit with one hand in the strange life ofthe other watching water throng on one stone loving Mary Sheffield for her chord changes river always before war I sit down and anywhere water flows the breastplate oftime rusts offme sounds green forms low voice new music long long past. DeerAmong Cattle Here and there in the searing beam Ofmy hand going through the night meadow They all are grazing With pins ofhuman light in their eyes. A wild one also is eating The human grass, Falling) .May Day Sermon) and Other Poems / 278 ...

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