James Dickey Poems

Here they are. The soft eyes open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
...

They will soon be down

To one, but he still will be
For a little while still will be stopping
...

I have just come down from my father.
Higher and higher he lies
Above me in a blue light
Shed by a tinted window.
...

Often, in these blue meadows,
I hear what passes for the bark of seals
...

Farm boys wild to couple
With anything with soft-wooded trees
With mounds of earth mounds
Of pine straw will keep themselves off
...

As he moves the mine detector
A few inches over the ground,
Making it vitally float
Among the ferns and weeds,
...

Right under their noses, the green
Of the field is paling away
Because of something fallen from the sky.

They see this, and put down
...

The last time I saw Donald Armstrong
He was staggering oddly off into the sun,
Going down, off the Philippine Islands.
...

We have all been in rooms
We cannot die in, and they are odd places, and sad.
Often Indians are standing eagle-armed on hills
...

In a stable of boats I lie still,
From all sleeping children hidden.
The leap of a fish from its shadow
Makes the whole lake instantly tremble.
...