Wild Fowl

To my rock-girt pool, at even
Came there wild fowl, six or seven,
Dropping dusky through the twilight to the pallid-shining water,
From the weary waste of heaven to the sky-reflecting water,
Folding there their tired pinions,
As renouncing air's dominions,
Placidly to float forever on the twilight-tinted water.

"Sweet," I said, "to find a haven;
Love of peace is deep-engraven
On the hearts of man and woman, though they search the world for
truth,
Range the space of thought's dominions in the dreary search for
truth,
Longing still to fold their wings
And forget their wanderings,
Finding love and peace a-glimmer with the pallid light of truth."

Scarce I spoke, they took their flight,
Winging back into the night,
Leaving lonely, rippled water chafing at its rocky shores,
Bitter, baffled, captive water chafing at its changeless shores,
While the wings that it had laved,
Now refreshed, the darkness braved,
Beating boldly through the blackness unconfined by any shores.

^__Nora B. Cunningham

Contemporary Kansas Poetry
Helen Rhoda Hoopes
page 39
(Kansas City: Joseph D. Havens Company. 1927)