Page:Trees Kilmer.djvu/78

TREES AND OTHER POEMS

DAVE LILLY (continued) I scrambled down to the brookside and hunted all about;

There wasn't a sign of a fisherman; there wasn't a sign of a trout.

But I heard somebody chuckle behind the hollow oak

And I got a whiff of tobacco like Lilly used to smoke.

It's fifteen years, they tell me, since anyone fished that brook;

And there's nothing in it but minnows that nibble the bait off your hook.

But before the sun has risen and after the moon has set

I know that it's full of ghostly trout for Lilly's ghost to get.

I guess I'll go to the tavern and get a bottle of rye

And leave it down by the hollow oak, where Lilly's ghost went by. [ 72 ]