Convalescence

I had forgotten how the moon could etch
The faintly moving shadows of the leaves
In silver lace upon the ground below
And how the lowering western sun could call,
From windows all along the quiet streets,
A thousand fairy fires to dance and glow.

And I did not remember how a bed
Of tall red cannas and of golden-glow
Could look at noontime on a summer day,
And that the tree outside my window held
A branch where, often as the twilight neared,
A robin came to sit and sing and sway.

I had forgotten these while long, gray days
Dragged out their weary length and my. tired heart
Groped, hesitant of life, in mists of pain;
But now I know a joy of life, twofold,
A sweet returning to the everyday:
I have remembered all these things again.

^__Nina Hartman Brown

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 26
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)