Well Bottom Blues

Sitting with this one from Poem-A-Day, pondering the end. I do admire the nature poetry of this Poundishly cantankerous but less twisted man, who did not wish evil on the world but would welcome modern society’s collapse and Nature’s Reconquista, especially if he could watch from the stone tower of Tor House.

People and a Heron

Robinson Jeffers 1887 –1962

A desert of weed and water-darkened stone under my western windows
The ebb lasted all afternoon,
And many pieces of humanity, men, women, and children, gathering shellfish,
Swarmed with voices of gulls the sea-breach.
At twilight they went off together, the verge was left vacant, an evening heron
Bent broad wings over the black ebb,
And left me wondering why a lone bird was dearer to me than many people.
Well: rare is dear: but also I suppose
Well reconciled with the world but not with our own natures we grudge to see them
Reflected on the world for a mirror.