Explore "Rattlesnake Mountain Fable II" by Maxwell Bodenheim on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ August sauntered down the mountain-side, / Dropping mottled, turbid wraiths of decay. / The air was like an old priest / Disrobing without embarrassment / Before the dark and candid gaze of night. / But these things brought no pause / To the saucily determined squirrel. / His eyes were hungrily upturned / To where the stars hung -- icily clustered nuts / Dotting trees of solitude. / He saw the stars just over the horizon, / And they seemed to grow / On trees that he could reach. / So he scampered on, from branch to branch, / Wondering why the fairy nut-trees / Ran away from him. / But, looking down, he spied / A softly wild cheeked mountain pool, / And there a handful of fairy nuts / Bit into the indigo cupping them. / With a squeal of weary happiness / The squirrel plunged into the mountain pool, / And as he drowned within its soundless heart / The fairy nuts were jigging over him, / Like the unheard stirring of a poem.