Janet Norris Bangs: The Sand-Dunes

“There I know blue, blue water,
And a waving line of land,
With pines that grow in a wind-swept row
As set by a dreamer’s hand;
And where the winds will, in hollow or hill,
Sand and sand and sand.

Sand as soft as a snowfall—
Drifting, eddying, whirled—
Sweeping into the valleys,
Over the grasses swirled,
And billowing up to the tree-tops
That look out on the world.

Sand of romantic patterns
New for each passer fleet.
Here a flower has lain, there the leaf-like chain
That was marked by a sea-gull’s feet;
And the pebbled trace as of scalloped lace
Where the waves and the shore-line meet.

Gleaming sands in the morning
When the little waves run white, 20
While gay wings fan the shining span
And float a song in flight;
And the lupine blue spreads a heaven new
Where the stars might rest till night.

But gray, gray sands at evening,
When haunting voices blow
Over twilight-faded water
From trees of long ago,
Hushed by the drifting silence
As by eternal snow.

O grass, flowers, trees unfruitful,
Caught while your sun was high,
Buried deep in the sand-dune’s keep,
Is all of life gone by?
Can a springing bough lift your glory now
And give it back to the sky?”