THE MINK'S HUNTING GROUND 



day is freezing cold and now and then 

 snow-squalls whirl in among the swamp 

 maples, eddying in flocks as the gold- 

 finches do, yet the surface of the biggest 

 pool where the waters well up is covered 

 with the vivid green of new plant life. 

 Millions of tiny boreal creatures swim 

 free on the cool surface, plants reduced 

 to their simplest terms, born for aught 

 I know in depths below like those 



" Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 

 Through caverns measureless to man 

 Down to a sunless sea," 



whence they ooze in the seeping of the 

 upward current to our shores. No one 

 has here found the seeds of these stem- 

 less pinheads of green that lie flat on the 

 surface and send down for a wee frac- 

 tion of an inch their two or three tiny 

 root hairs into the water. 



