There is a singer everyone has heard, Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird, Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again. He says that leaves are old and that for flowers Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten. He says the early petal-fall is past When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers On sunny days a moment overcast; And comes that other fall we name the fall. He says the highway dust is over all. The bird would cease and be as other birds But that he knows in singing not to sing. The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing.
Boulders, precariously perched on the edge of a precipice.
Do the residents of the huts down the mountain ever think of that boulder?
Maybe they thought not being directly under it would keep them safe, but what bounce might a boulder take -- freefalling, tumbling, hitting outcrops, sliding on scree, cracking to fragments, being not spherical in the least, and so on?
My guess is that they never think about it... or think about it every minute.
And in some moment when they aren't thinking of it... SPLAT!
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
When the meadows laugh with lively green, And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene, When Mary and Susan and Emily With their sweet round mouths sing 'Ha, Ha, He!'
When the painted birds laugh in the shade, Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread, Come live & be merry, and join with me, To sing the sweet chorus of 'Ha, Ha, He!'
Tiger Riding for Beginners 