I have inherited
My mother’s nature,
Sensitive to light,
By any strong wind led,
Loving each living creature,
And from my father feature
In eye alert of sight,
In a horse trader’s head,
Hands that are never still,
Hair brown as a walnut hull,
And finally a will
Running through bone and marrow
Tough as grandfather’s skull
Which seventy years ago
Broke a hickory arrow
From a Dakota bow.
I have the hands of a man,
The harried hawk eyes to see.
I am that ghost which ran
From the sun, and out of flame
Made a length of energy,
Giving it face and name,
The lonely touch of woman,
The terrible power to be,
Calling it proud and human.
The generations of men
Thrust their shoulder behind
The wheel of my living when
Neither wheel nor I can find
The plain road to the future,
The rut through buffalo grass.
They bind the ragged suture
In bone around the brain,
They stare from my eyes and pass
With the little pulse of heart
Through artery and vein.
No man lives all apart.
He cannot ever hide,
For they are at his foot
And wander by his side,
They are that bold, dead stone
That bends the living root.
(Paul Engle)
More Poetry from Paul Engle:
Paul Engle Poems based on Topics: Man, Mind, Light, Name, Woman, Energy, Generation, Horse, Nature, Hair, Brain- America Remembers (Paul Engle Poems)
- Proem to American Song (Paul Engle Poems)
- Hero (Paul Engle Poems)
- For 1939 (Paul Engle Poems)
- In a Bar Near Shibuya Station, Tokyo (Paul Engle Poems)
- Tourist (Paul Engle Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Man Poems, Light Poems, Mind Poems, Nature Poems, Sense & Perception Poems, Name Poems, Woman Poems, Hair Poems, Charity Poems, Future Poems, Brain PoemsBased on Keywords: dakota, suture
- The Wild Knight (Gilbert Keith Chesterton Poems)
- Mogg Megone - Part I. (John Greenleaf Whittier Poems)
- A Story Of Plantagenet (Nora Pembroke Poems)
- Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto I. (Matthew Prior Poems)
- Birdofredum Sawin; Esq., To Mr. Hosea Biglow (2) (James Russell Lowell Poems)