A gray autumn day.
Down in our back yard
green shrubs are washed by rain.

At the far end
the little naked boy
stands patiently holding his dolphin.
His basin is empty.
The fountain has been turned off for the winter.

A few leaves litter the pathways of paved stone.

All is still.
Now, suddenly, a gust of rain—
the green shrubs twist in the wind.

This is no longer a place to sit in,
or even to walk in.
It is a place to be viewed, to be imagined,
to be populated as one wishes.
A place to be remembered with wonder.

At left a gray cat creeps along the fence-top.

It leaps down to our neighbors’ yard and quickly disappears.

—Frederick Morgan