Two walls, dizzy with rain-touch
And suffused with gauzily amorous sunlight,
Creep over a hill and meet.
And so our foreheads touch.
Silence between our hands grows into clasped music
Sprinkling our finger-tips with attenuated chords of touch.
Our hearts weave low songs to this accompaniment:
So low that even silence cannot hear.
Are you alive?
I touch you.
You quiver like a sea-fish.
I cover you with my net.
What are you--banded one?
When I lay down
In a clover place,
With eyelids closed,
In a clover place,
A little wind came to my face.
One gentle wind
Blew on my mouth,
And I said, "It will quiver by.
What little wind now can it be?"
And I lay still
Where the clovers were.
But when I raised my lids to see,
Then it was a butterfly.
Under the leaves of that tremendous oak,
Where the low stars lie tangled, there is shade
Delusive and the leafy hedges fade
Into the darkness like a curling smoke.
O in the shadow there,
Come with me, love, there let us two repair
To mingle with the darkness and be lost,
As somewhere viewless ghost with viewless ghost
May meet, caress and shiver with sweet pain,
Invisibly enamoured. So may we
Lie in each other's arms invisibly
And touch and see not, kiss and kiss again
With lips obscure,
That find their way as ardent and as sure
In darkness as in day.
Come ! there the softly moving shadows play
Here lies the body of Lois Spears,
Born Lois Fluke, daughter of Willard Fluke,
Wife of Cyrus Spears,
Mother of Myrtle and Virgil Spears,
Children with clear eyes and sound limbs—
(I was born blind)
I was the happiest of women
As wife, mother and housekeeper.
Caring for my loved ones,
And making my home
A place of order and bounteous hospitality:
For I went about the rooms,
And about the garden
With an instinct as sure as sight,
As though there were eyes in my finger tips—
Glory to God in the highest.
I love your hands:
They are big hands, firm hands, gentle hands;
Hair grows on the back near the wrist ...
I have seen the nails broken and stained
From hard work.
And yet, when you touch me,
I grow small ....... and quiet ........
....... And happy ..........
If I might only grow small enough
To curl up into the hollow of your palm,
Your left palm,
Curl up, lie close and cling,
So that I might know myself always there,
....... Even if you forgot.
That sputter of rain, flipping the hedge-rows
And making the highways hiss.
How I love it !
And the touch of you upon my arm
As you press against me that my umbrella
May cover you.
Tinkle of drops on stretched silk.
Wet murmur through green branches.
If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass, oh still too heavy it were,
Too heavy!