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  • 25 Lines or Fewer

Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter

By John Crowe Ransom

There was such speed in her little body,   
And such lightness in her footfall,   
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.

Her wars were bruited in our high window.   
We looked among orchard trees and beyond   
Where she took arms against her shadow,   
Or harried unto the pond

The lazy geese, like a snow cloud
Dripping their snow on the green grass,   
Tricking and stopping, sleepy and proud,   
Who cried in goose, Alas,

For the tireless heart within the little   
Lady with rod that made them rise
From their noon apple-dreams and scuttle   
Goose-fashion under the skies!

But now go the bells, and we are ready,   
In one house we are sternly stopped
To say we are vexed at her brown study,   
Lying so primly propped.

Poet Bio

Image of John Crowe Ransom

Poet and Critic John Crowe Ransom grew up in Tennessee and attended Oxford and Vanderbilt University, where he taught for many decades. Though his career as a poet was short—most of his poems were published in a three year period—he enjoyed acclaim throughout his life. His short, traditional lyric poems, often filled with wit and irony, use both mythological allusions and situations from everyday life to examine the metaphysical difficulties of love and death. In poems such as “Janet Waking” he shows the instability of life and the difficulty of understanding its changes.

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A Wyandot Cradle Song

By Bertrand N. O. Walker

Hush thee and sleep, little one, 
     The feathers on thy board sway to and fro; 
The shadows reach far downward in the water 
     The great old owl is waking, day will go. 

Rest thee and fear not, little one, 
     Flitting fireflies come to light you on your way 
To the fair land of dreams, while in the grasses 
     The happy cricket chirps his merry lay. 

Tsa-du-meh watches always o’er her little one, 
     The great owl cannot harm you, slumber on 
’Till the pale light comes shooting from the eastward, 
     And the twitter of the birds says night has gone.

  • Living
  • The Mind

Whose Mouth Do I Speak With

By Suzanne S. Rancourt

I can remember my father bringing home spruce gum.
He worked in the woods and filled his pockets
with golden chunks of pitch.
For his children
he provided this special sacrament
and we’d gather at this feet, around his legs,
bumping his lunchbox, and his empty thermos rattled inside.
Our skin would stick to Daddy's gluey clothing
and we’d smell like Mumma's Pine Sol.
We had no money for store bought gum
but that’s all right.
The spruce gum
was so close to chewing amber
as though in our mouths we held the eyes of Coyote
and how many other children had fathers
that placed on their innocent, anxious tongue
the blood of tree?

  • Nature
  • Living
  • Relationships
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