Sunrise by Charles Erskine Scott Wood

Another for National Poetry Month. The imagery in this poem is incredible.  Enjoy!

Sunrise 

by Charles Erskine Scott Wood

The lean coyote, prowler of the night,
Slips to his rocky fastnesses,
Jack-rabbits noiselessly shuttle among the sage-brush,
And from the castellated cliffs,
Rock-ravens launch their proud black sails upon the day.
The wild horses troop back to their pastures.

The poplar-trees watch beside the irrigation-ditches.
Orioles, whose nests sway in the cotton-wood trees by the ditch-side, begin to twitter.
All shy things, breathless, watch
The thin white skirts of dawn,
The dancer of the sky,
Who trips daintily down the mountain-side
Emptying her crystal chalice....
And a red-bird, dipped in sunrise, cracks from a poplar's top
His exultant whip above a silver world.