* * * * *
Home again, Eloise, Home and June. Born of the same May mother, but
differing so, this and that other June! How un-of-kin they seem to be!
That last dance, the death ride over the bars, homeless, the despair of
that June a year ago.
And now home again and The Home Stretch mine!
June, and writing this to you as I sit in the old sweet place under the
old sweet trees, under the hickories we loved so, and afar off is the
flush of old gold above the violet of the western hills.
And the same June sounds come over to me: the call of an ewe to an
errant lamb; the neigh of a mare and the answering whinny of her colt;
the distant staccato clatter of binders amid the wheat.
And a wood-thrush deep in our laurel thicket rinsing clear the air
around with her liquid notes....
Since Christmas I have seen it all, for it was Christmas when the boys
came marching home, seen it again and again, never tiring of seeing it,
life as it shuttles across the loom of the Middle Basin. If the canvas
were a meadow backgrounded in green, this is how the picture would be: a
patch of red-bud now and then for early spring; and later, a green sheen
creeping like a high-tide over the hills. But later still, after the
wheat is harvested it were a stubblefield canvassed to cleanness; there
would run a riot of passion flowers and morning glories in brave, bold
colors of beauty. And the picture would be June in the Middle Basin.
I have sat this afternoon watching the trees on the round breast of the
hill across the way, a shield of green on the round shoulder of the
hill; and as I looked I had a strange upliftingness which I knew was of
poetry and that it was the melting of my heart because it was June again
and home and because of the love of you.
Why should I potter and make excuse of it? If there be love there is a
poem.
Take mine as it is--this voice of the trees--as the sweetness of it all
came over me, listening, listening and loving you, Eloise.