Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/359

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PVOL. VII ___ oetrv a m,9 of Vent

MARCH, 1916


ARIZONA POEMS

THE WELL IN THE DESERT

BY the well in the desert I sat for long,
And saw the magpies with black and white chequered bodies,
Leaping from twig to twig of the greasewood
To look at the water spilled on the ground
By the herder who went by with three lean cattle
Climbing out of the blue and gold shimmer of morning.
There was the shallow well, with stones piled about it,
The coarse tattered rope, the battered tin bucket,
And the nose of my pony cropping thin grass not far off;
Then gray sagebrush and silence.
At the horizon

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