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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  H. L. Davis

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Running Vines in a Field

H. L. Davis

From “Primapara”

LOOK up, you loose-haired women in the field,

From work, and thoughtless picking at the ground.

Cease for a little: pay me a little heed.

It is early: the red leaves of the blackberry vines

Are hoar with frosty dew, the ground’s still wet,

There is vapor over toward the summer fallow.

And you three make a garden, being put by—

Since you are too old for love you make a garden?

It is love with me, and not these dark red frosty leaves

The vines of which you root for garden-space.

You will be concerned, you three used up and set by:

I could speak of the red vines, of pastures, of young trees;

And you would dibble at love as you do the vine-roots.

It is early, but before your backs be warmed,

And before all this dew be cleared and shed,

I shall be half among your hearts with speech:

Love, and my sorrow, the disastrous passages,

So that you’ll cease all gardening, dangle dark red

Vines in your hands not knowing it, and whisper.

They forget me for a little pride of old time.