Where the path came out of a pine wood

The sunny smell of the grass was good.

Wind from the water touched my face

As I lay down in a quiet place,

And the salt clean smell of ocean air

Was health to the mind, and drove out care.

Three gulls hung sharp against the light .

The sun burned hot on my tired sight.

For flight like theirs I have not kept

Long wings like theirs," I said - and slept -

For a moment only, sliding deep,

A diver toward the dark of sleep.

I woke. And birds in that bright weather

Soared and sailed, still three together.

Earth was warm, and the water there,

But, as if my body had been stripped bare,

Clothes were nothing. Even the skin,

Now light as thought, let summer in

To heart and lungs behind the flesh,

To bone's marrow, and blood's mesh.

Easily in to my troubled mind

The earth, abundant, secret, blind,

Had breathed itself before I woke.

But nothing moved, and no one spoke.

I stared . I shouted up at empty sky

That gave three seagulls room to fly.

But the light wind blew in the same way,

And earth went on with her summer day.