Not Seeing is Believing    by Paul Petrie

From across the stream, on the side of the opposite hill,
I see a woman in a blue, wool coat who is walking her dog.
Her hair is as white as snow, and her dog snow-white.
They are walking through the plum-brown, silvery branches of trees.
Step after step she moves, leaning on each foot, as the old do.
She is walking her dog and thinking.
Under the nest of her hair is another world--
are many other worlds--past, present, future--
but none of this shows
She is walking her dog and thinking, and the dog too
is thinking--Bushes are telling damp, excited tales
of an earlier sun, of a darkness before this sun--
and the trees around them are thinking--slow, wooden thoughts
that stretch over centuries, and the earth in which the trees
root down also is pondering--deep, stone thoughts--
but none of this shows.
I see a woman in a blue, wool coat
who is walking a small, white dog
through the plum-brown, silvery trees.

Dying Vision of The Dollhouse Maker     by Paul Petrie

And the room shrank to a matchbox--
the bed turned small,
the lamplight dwindled until it seemed
no light at all--
and each of those tiny faces
hovering overhead,
dropping their small, enchanted pearls
upon the bed
seemed infinitely far-off, fragile
as dollhouse things--
lost in their litlle griefs, their hopes
and sufferings--
Absurd, in a house of make-believe,
to shed real tears--
over such minute tragedies--
such imagined fears.