GREEN ESCAPE

At three o'clock in the afternoon

On a hot September day,

I began to dream of a highland stream

And a frostbit russet tree;

Of the swashing dip of a clipper ship

( White canvas wet with spray )

And the swirling green and milk-foam clean

Along her canted lee.

I heard the quick staccato click

Of the typist's pounding keys,

And I had to brood of a wind more rude

Than that by a motor fanned —

And I lay inert in a flannel shirt

To watch the rhyming seas

Deploy and fall in a silver sprawl

On a beach of sun-blanched sand.

There is no desk shall tame my lust

For hills and windy skies;

My secret hope of the sea's blue slope

No clerkly task shall dull;

And though I print no echoed hint

Of adventures I devise,

My eyes still pine for the comely line

Of an outbound vessel's hull.

When I elope with an autumn day

And make my green escape,

I'll leave my pen to tamer men

Who have more docile souls;

For forest aisles and office files

Have a very different shape,

And it's hard to woo the ocean blue

In a row of pigeon holes!