Wild birds fly over me.
I am not the blue curtain overhead,
I am the one who lives under the sky.
I swing to the tree-tops,
I pick strawberries,
I sing and play,
And happiness makes me like a great god
On the earth.
It makes me think of great things
A little girl like me
Could not know of.
PINK ROSE-PETALS
Pink rose-petals
Fluttering down in hosts,
I know what you mean
Sometimes, in Spring.
It is love you mean.
Love has a gray bird
That flutters down;
A dove that comes flying
Saying the same thing.
How happy it makes me to think of it,
Rose-petals . . . the gray dove . . .
THE LONESOME GREEN APPLE
There was a little green apple
That had lasted over winter.
He had one leaf . . .
In spite of that he was lonesome.
He wondered what he could do
When the blossoms were all around him,
But one day he saw something!
Petals were falling, faces were looking out,
Shapes like his were coming in the buds;
Then he said:
"If I hold on
There will be a tree-full,
and I shall know more than any of them!"
I AM
I am willowy boughs
For coolness;
I am gold-finch wings
For darkness;
I am a little grape
Thinking of September,
I am a very small violet
Thinking of May.
MUSHROOM SONG
Oh little mushrooms with brown faces underneath
And bare white heads,
You think of summer and you think of song . . .
Why don't you think of me
In my little white bed
In the night?
You think only of your singsong and your dances,
Following your leader round and round,
You think only of the grass
And the green apples and leaves
Dropping out of the blue . . .
Why don't you think of me asleep
In my little white bed?
The wind thinks of me,
Brown-white dancers!
You forget,
But the wind remembers.