From without the Fence

Yes, I have loved them

And still love them.

Yet hesitating on the soft warm carpet

Within the formal hall,

My lips conceal the eagerness of going,

My toes move murderous in their shoes.

And I am like a colt,

Long held beside his mother's placid flank,

His belly over-filled

With too smooth bitten pasture grass.

When the mare turns

He hurtles through the narrow lane

To hillsides rank with bloom and poison weed

And brawny oak

Driving their hard and amorous roots

Through sandy soil.