If your hand had been meaningless Not a single blade of grass Would spring from the earth's surface. Easy to write, to kiss -- No, I said, read your paper. Be there Like the earth When shadow covers the wet grass.
Spicer's "Alba" opens with a bold claim: a lover's touch matters so much that, without it, the world itself would stop growing. If the hand "had been meaningless," not one blade of grass would rise from the ground. Love, here, isn't just a private feeling; it seems to switch the whole landscape on.
Then the mood shifts. Something is interrupted. The speaker pulls back with a curt "No, I said, read your paper," as if refusing an easy moment of writing or kissing. It's hard to say exactly who is speaking to whom, and the poem doesn't spell it out. But the tone suggests restraint, maybe a deliberate cooling of intimacy.
The ending settles into stillness. "Be there / Like the earth / When shadow covers the wet grass" is a quiet request for steady presence, patient and unshowy. The title, which means "dawn," adds a hint of morning light, though the poem's last image leans toward shade. The feeling is tender, but guarded.