The Lonely One

Nothing is more weighed with grief

Than the print of a leaf

Brown, fossil-hard on the ground.

And he remembers the grooves

Left by deer hooves

When the swift troop sped.

A life dries

To a rind, and lies

In its mound.

He has too stern a heart to grope

For ease in any wistful hope;

Yet, spellbound in the shadowed air,

Time after time he will stand and stare

On the hollow tracks of the dead.