Page 56 (1/2)

“Aggie Lou, I want to talk to you about Clarisse”

“What about Clarisse?” asked Aggie Lou, breathlessly

Two ie Lou walked up to the ce, and dropped so

THE WADERS

THE FEET WAITED inside the door, burning in their leather boxes The feet waited inside a thousand doors and the day burned green and yellow and blue, the day was a great circus banner The trees staes fiercely upon clouds like surass quivered like a green ocean And the feet waited, white with a winter of waiting, large and small feet, tender with six months of iling in warm darkness And far and away and above cauments about the season of the year, the te hardly over, rather But this, said the whining voices, the insistent voices, was green summer, this was the day of the sun And the feet worked their toes together and clenched the

There, just beyond the squeaking porch, the ferns were a green water sprinkled softly on the air There waited the great pool of grass with its tender heads of clover and its devil weed, with its old acorns hidden, with its ant civilizations It was toward this grass country that the feet were slowly inching As the body of a boy on a sweltering July day yearns toward swirass and seas of minted clover and dew

As the naked bodies of boys plunge like white stones and bobble like brown corks in the far country rivers, so the feet wish to plu

nge and swim in the summer lawns, refreshed

Well, said a woht, said the voice, all right, but if you catch your death of cold, don’t co

Bang! Out the door! Over the rail! Watch the ferns! And into the lake of grass! Under the shady oaks! Off with the shoes, and now, running wet in the dew, running dry and cool under apple shade and oak shade and elm shade, a hot race over desert sidewalks, and the coolness of lireen ice andfor old autuo’s burnt rose-petals, for anthills The po into cool dark earth, the little toes picking at , the hot feet drowning in cool tides of grass Tih later, to venture tenderly out on cinder drives and rocky paths where the ene white, lie waiting to test one’s softened calluses Tih later for these marshmallointer-soft feet to slim themselves like Indian braves, paint themselves with colored dirts, bruise themselves with rocks and thorns

No, just the cool grass The cool grass and a thousand other bare feet, running and running there

THE DOG

HE WAS THE town He was the town compounded and reduced, refined to its essences, its odors and its strewing

He walked through the town or ran through the town any hour of the day or night, whenever the whim took him, when the ht him like a carved animal from a Swiss clock He was small; with a handle you could have carried him like a black valise And he was hairy as copper-wool, steel-wool, shavings and brushes And he was never silent when he could be loud

He caht lake with a smell of water in his pelt He came from the sands and shook a fine dust of it under the bed He smelled of June rain and October maple leaves and Christmas snows and April rains He was the weather, hot or cold He fetched it back from wherever he herever he had been The sainst fire station poles a and come home feverish from political conversation The sh the cool tombs of the court house The sas station, away from summer Frosted like a birthday cake he entered from January Baked like a rabbit he caes buried in his clock-spring hair