Evening, and all my ghosts come back to me
like red banty hens to catalpa limbs
and chicken-wired hutches, clucking, clucking,
and falling, at last, into their head-under-wing sleep.

I think about the field of grass I lay in once,
between Omaha and Lincoln. It was summer, I think.
The air smelled green, and wands of windy green, a-sway,
a-sway, swayed over me. I lay on green sod
like a prairie snake letting the sun warm me.

What does a girl think about alone
in a field of grass, beneath a sky as bright
as an Easter dress, beneath a green wind?

Maybe I have not shaken the grass.
All is vanity.

Maybe I never rose from that green field.
All is vanity.

Maybe I did no more than swallow deep, deep breaths
and spill them out into story: all is vanity.

Maybe I listened to the wind sighing and shivered,
spinning, awhirl amidst the bluestem
and green lashes: O my beloved! O my beloved!

I lay in a field of grass once, and then went on.
Even the hollow my body made is gone.

I hid my heart in a nest of roses,
   Out of the sun’s way, hidden apart;
In a softer bed than the soft white snow’s is,
   Under the roses I hid my heart.
   Why would it sleep not? why should it start,
When never a leaf of the rose-tree stirred?
   What made sleep flutter his wings and part?
Only the song of a secret bird.

Lie still, I said, for the wind’s wing closes,
   And mild leaves muffle the keen sun’s dart;
Life still, for the wind of the warm sea dozes,
   And the wind is unquieter yet than thou art.
   Does a thought in thee still as a thorn’s wound smart?
Does the fang still fret thee of hope deferred?
What bids the lids of thy sleep dispart?
Only the song of a secret bird.

The green land’s name that a charm encloses,
   It never was writ in the traveller’s chart,
And sweet as the fruit on its tree that grows is,
   It never was sold in the merchant’s mart.
   The swallows of dreams through its dim fields dart,
And sleep’s are the tunes in its tree tops heard;
   No hound’s note wakens the wildwood hart,
Only the song of a secret bird.

ENVOI

In the world of dreams I have chosen my part,
   To sleep for a season and hear no word
Of true love’s truth or of light love’s art,
   Only the song of a secret bird.