Two Campers In Cloud Country

(Rock Lake,

Canada)In this country there is neither measure nor

To redress the dominance of rocks and woods,

The passage, say, of these man-shaming clouds.

No gesture of yours or mine could catch their attention,

No word make them carry water or fire the

Like local trolls in the spell of a superior being.

Well, one wearies of the Public Gardens:  one wants a

Where trees and clouds and animals pay no notice;

Away from the labeled elms, the tame tea-roses.

It took three days driving north to find a

The polite skies over Boston couldn't possibly accommodate.

Here on the last frontier of the big, brash

The horizons are too far off to be chummy as uncles;

The colors assert themselves with a sort of vengeance.

Each day concludes in a huge splurge of

And night arrives in one gigantic step.

It is comfortable, for a change, to mean so little.

These rocks offer no purchase to herbage or people:

They are conceiving a dynasty of perfect cold.

In a month we'll wonder what plates and forks are for.

I lean to you, numb as a fossil.  Tell me I'm here.

The Pilgrims and Indians might never have happened.

Planets pulse in the lake like bright amoebas;

The pines blot our voices up in their lightest sighs.

Around our tent the old simplicities

Sleepily as Lethe, trying to get in.

We'll wake blank-brained as water in the dawn.