Fawns Foster-Mother
The old woman sits on a bench before the door and
With her meagre pale demoralized daughter.
Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the
And saying that when she was first
She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.(It is empty now, the roof has
But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the
Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;
The place is now more solitary than ever before.)"When I was nursing my second
My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a
And brought it;
I put its mouth to the
Rather than let it starve,
I had milk enough for three babies.
Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,
Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.
I had more joy from that than from the others."Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad
With market-wagons, mean cares and decay.
She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry
Soon to be shed from the earth's old eye-brows,
I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,
The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.
Robinson Jeffers
Other author posts
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It is good for strength not to be To its own weakness, good for the deep urn to run over, good to The peaks and the deeps, who can endure it, Good to be hurt, who can be healed afterward: but you that have whetted
Boats In A Fog
Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers, The exuberant voices of music, Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter That makes beauty; the
Vulture
I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare Above the ocean I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven, And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing, I understood...
The Deer Lay Down Their Bones
I followed the narrow cliffside trail half way up the Above the deep river-canyon There was a little cataract crossed the path, flinging Over tree roots and rocks, shaking the jeweled fern-fronds, bright bubbling
