Mirages

(Noted verbatim after a supper-talk outdoors in Nevada with

two old miners.)

MORE experiences and sights, stranger, than you’d think for;

Times again, now mostly just after sunrise or before sunset,

Sometimes in spring, oftener in autumn, perfectly clear weather, in

plain sight,

Camps far or near, the crowded streets of cities and the shopfronts,

(Account for it or not- credit or not- it is all true,

And my mate there could tell you the like- we have often confab’d

about it,)

People and scenes, animals, trees, colors and lines, plain as could

be,

Farms and dooryards of home, paths border’d with box, lilacs in

corners,

Weddings in churches, thanksgiving dinners, returns of long-absent

sons,

Glum funerals, the crape-veil’d mother and the daughters,

Trials in courts, jury and judge, the accused in the box,

Contestants, battles, crowds, bridges, wharves,

Now and then mark’d faces of sorrow or joy,

(I could pick them out this moment if I saw them again,)

Show’d to me just aloft to the right in the sky-edge,

Or plainly there to the left on the hill-tops.