HIDING PLACES 



small havens is lifelong. They are rarely 

 at hand in later days, but no locked door 

 and no walled chamber of the mind can 

 take their place. 



The suns of midsummer, tempered by 

 spruce boughs, flicker and play upon a 

 broad-backed rock where fairy pools made 

 by the late rain in its crannies are fre- 

 quented by waxwing and woodpecker, even 

 though an intruder sleeps upon that 

 dryad's couch. Brakes and sweet fern 

 crowd around it. Tasseled alders are its 

 curtains. Here one might be forever at 

 rest. It is to such a place that rebel 

 wishes turn when the early grass and clover 

 thicken in the pastures or when the sum- 

 mer birds begin their slow recessional. 

 The longing to lie upon a sun-warmed rock 

 in the woods comes back desperately in 

 April and October to them who once have 

 known that place of healing and stillness. 



Yellow bells from the wands of circling 

 forsythia bushes drop into a deep hollow 

 lined with velvet grass. Pale butterflies 

 of new-come May flutter among the dande- 

 lions that bejewel this emerald cup of Gaea, 

 and sometimes drowsy wings are folded 

 sleepily upon a gold rosette. Light beams 



[79] 



