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These are the days when heart's tension
full of a bowstring's taut life,
knows the shape of the arrow it holds;
savors the moment it darts
its joy into banked cumulus of hope.

Now it is when cataracts
of summer with splintery crystal crash
send torrents of spray-sound
washing news of their jaunty tour
over birdsong deep in shadow
of tamarack, maple and pine;
when the sea spreads voracious fingers
into conch-strewn harbors and hisses;
when, over spirited crests of ocean,
a gull, heeding the wind's frolic,
planes higher for calming strokings.

These are the days we await all year
when regal sun is slow to show
in shadow-growth the day's demise.
Hawks hover cornfields, undulant;
deer dart through forest, tremulous;
and the body of every murmuring stream
knows silver life in its cool depths
gliding in emerald bonds and flowingness.

These are the days we never forget;
when hopes step into the flesh
of our imagination when optimism
turns the key of further understanding;
when stroke after stroke we move easy
through the small sea of our mortality.

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