Lakeside Sketch

Where a single steeple keeps the sky
And a scribbled wet of charcoal darks
Laps lapsing to meet the day,
--Crosshatched by wind's artistic lark,--
Monday quiet's come, as quiet may
Upon one meditation-taken;
After-silence serves some way
For all the echo left the lake.

The boathouse goes down to dock
On knees of battered pilings.
Suppliant to greet common rock,
The dock goes flat as filings.
Astute, the musing rock
Lets the mirror water watch
What it has mind enough to mock:--
Searchers who seek a latch.

There is no back or access side
To such a thing that is all is;
And if you say inside,
And take inside out to see what 'tis,
I'll say, 'tis better far to glide
Whatever offered surfaces
And decode what pleasure there resides
In such interstices

Than creep through dark, however wide
The open crosshatch seems or is,
To pull apart, to peer at tides
Whose motives are their business,--
And trouble them enough alive
To wash our prayers with their sighs.