Forest Hour

We said: “The sun’s
gone, it is dusk, the
full moon tops
that giant spruce.”

We said: “Our lips
launch clouds, the
snow’s cold crunch
is brittle.”

“In dusk’s rinsed blue and
moon’s rinsed glacial light
this forest hour,” we said,
“has the vast
dream-stillness of our
shadows.”

“That delicate swift
stipple of wild paws on
snow, the ferns asleep, the moss,
the sleeping birch and ash,
the sleep of chipmunks and the
starlings’ sleep!” we said,
hushed as the haze of
frost.

James Daly has had both poetry and prose published in magazines, and has worked in steel mills, taught school, directed and acted in the theatre and written advertising copy.

This poem originally ran in the July 17, 1935, issue of the magazine.