The rock-cheeks have red fire-stains. But the place was maiden, no previous Building, no neighbors, nothing but the elements, Rock, wind, and sea; in moon-struck nights the mountain Coyotes howled in our dooryard; or doe and fawn Stared in the lamplit window, We raised two boys here All that we saw or heard was beautiful And hardly human. Oh heavy change. The world deteriorates like a rotting apple, worms and a skin. They have built streets around us, new houses Line them and cars obsess them - and my dearest has died. The ocean at least is not changed at all, Cold, grim, and faithful; and I still keep a hard edge of forest Haunted by long gray squirrels and hoarse herons.

Against the outcrop boulders of a raised beach We built our house when I and my love were young.

If you should look for this place after a handful of lifetimes: Perhaps of my planted forest a few May stand yet, dark-leaved Australians or the coast cypress,…

Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works diss…

Rust rust rust in the engines of love and time

I like to think how easily Nature will absorb London as she absorbed the mastodon, setting her spiders to spin the winding-sheet and her worms to fill in the g…

Sad that our finest aspiration Our freshest dreams and meditations, In swift succession should decay, Like Autumn leaves that rot away.