The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a living being. To wait in a field and then be left behind, To watch a tree grow through the house we built, And years after the trees would be gone.

We could sing to the stars without the stars, But each evening they seemed to us to weave The light of a place we were not. A place alien to human sunlight, Yet close enough that we would want to go.

So gently, in the blue of the evening sky, The earth smiled back, and the moonlight burst, A hand of whispers and petals, a sigh, Inviting us to lift our eyes and wish.

• Robert Frost