Dorothy Keeley: On The Wing

“A wind that blows from the sea, and smells
Of spring and fall together,
Runs racing up the yellow fields
Into the autumn weather.

And I run too, for I am young
And breathless with all living—
The trees are shouting as we pass,
The asters singing in the grass.

In half an hundred years from now,
When all my songs are sung,
I’ll not be old and crossly sage,
I’ll love the bright hill of my age
Under its winter sun,
And wave the gayest hand I know
To everything that’s young.”