I. Piñonero

Oh, Piñonero!

Now you are back in the piñon tree,

It means snow on the mountain

And school for me,

Piñonero!

And I wish I had nothing else to do

Than flit about in a coat of blue

Eating piñon nuts,

Like you,

Piñonero!

II. Rabbit-Brush

All down arroyo seco

Where a river should belong,

There’s never any river

All summer long.

But as soon as comes October

There’s a yellow river flows,

A frothy yellow river,

A money-yellow river

Where the rabbit-brush grows.

III. I Shall Go West

Someday I shall go West,

Having won all time to love it in, at last,

Too still to boast.

But when I smell the sage,

When the long, marching landscape line

Melts into wreathing mountains,

And the dust cones dance,

Something in me that is of them will stir.

Happy if I come home

When the musk scented, moon-white gilia blows,

When all the hills are blue, remembering

The sea from which they rose.

Happy again,

When blunt faced bees carouse

In the red flagons of the incense shrub,

Or apricots have lacquered boughs,

And trails are dim with rain!

Lay me where some contented oak can prove

How much of me is nurture for a tree;

Sage thoughts of mine

Be acorn clusters for the deer to browse.

My loving whimsies -- Will you chide again

When they come up as lantern flowers?

I shall be small and happy as the grass,

Proud if my tip

Stays the white, webby moons the spider weaves,

Where once you trod

Or down my bleaching stalks shall slip

The light, imprisoning dew.

I shall be bluets in the April sod!

Or if the wheel should turn too fast,

Run up and rest

As a sequoia for a thousand years!

-- Mary Hunter Austin (1868-1934)