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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  H. L. Davis

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

In This Wet Orchard

H. L. Davis

From “To the River Beach”

“OTHERS came in this wet orchard,” I say. “Years ago

There were many like the tall woman who comes now,

Avoiding with her head the low swinging boughs;

And they kept the weeds cut better.” Noise of waves;

Wind running through the tree-tops; the speed of salt-tasting

Wind parting the boughs and the weeds about her knees.

I begin to say: “I lived in this place all one year

Before I was grown; and you were that one of them,

The girl nearly grown who stood beside the weed fire

In only a blue dress, and that dirty. The wind

Wrapped it on your body and wound it like fire,

Like a fire in grass. You were that one who cried

That she was eating wind. You had a red mouth,

You had a red mouth, your short hair wound over your face

As the flame did around your legs. Thin girl,

Sharp-voiced in the smoke, screaming loud as a hawk,

‘The smoke follows the beauty!’ There was a young man

With you, I forget his name.”
“Are you that brother,

The little boy who lay bellied against the grass,

Staring and staring at us, and at the sky

Where birds climbed and looked down? When we left the fire.

You turned your face to the wet grass in the ditch,

And whispered, ‘Like, like, like.’ You would take more words

Now, to describe us.”
“Yes, or no words at all.”

“Well. The waves yonder, the wild crabapple trees

Bring that time to mind quicker. Coarse broad-blade grass,

The cut-grass with three sides, the wild cheat-grass, white

And all broken, with its seed shelled. The tracked ground

And leaf-stems marked my hands and arms; the windfalls

From the wild crabapple trees; a young thorn-tree

Which I tasted the bark of. Taste of salt, the sun.

I could eat the wind then, and salt water. I wanted no fire,

For running in the sun warmed me. No friend need

Ever put a hand on me. I was the beauty.

The young man who is dead could have told you.”
Then I:

“I remember your face better than your sisters’ names.

The tall girl in the wind of that fire.”
And she again:

“Yes. If I die here, and hang on a fruit-tree

To scare birds from my orchard, you’ll go under me

Thinking that girl died years ago; remember her

Thin legs, wind in her short hair, her shrill voice,

And go between these trees saying, ‘Dead so long,’

As if she had never grown, for lack of you.

Look at me. This is my orchard; and these are her hands;

My mouth is the mouth you remember, red or not red.”

Let it be, until she have gone; but I know this:

That you can come to this orchard, O thin girl!

I have seen you run here, and seen the wind burn your face

And burn your young mouth, and blow your dress like fire.

And your spirit passes me when I desire.