Walt Kelly, The Scene Shifts Uneasily.
One of the favorite devices of critics when examining poets
is to look at the words that they
reuse to analyze and examine their residence tables.
I did it before anybody could do it to me by writing--
by noting some of the words that keep showing up in my own words
and writing a poem about them.
It's called The Word.
Wind, bird, and tree, water, grass, and light.
In half of what I write, roughly or smoothly, nearby impatient
years, the same six words recur.
I have as many floors as meadows or rivers,
as much still air as wind, and as many cats
in mind as nest and the branches to put an end to these.
Instead, I take what is.
The light beats on a stone.
And wind over water signs like long grass through the trees.
As I set loose, like birds in a landscape, the old world.