isn't it strange, that you meet yourself in different people, in new faces,
The person you witness and become, the imprint remains
It is part of you, subdued but brewed like cyclonic wind
Decode others with empathy, look beneath the eyelids
The door to the soul, it looks just like mine
From the exterior, what is, all these coverings?
We have hidden the warmth quite beneath everything.

1058

Bloom—is Result—to meet a Flower
And casually glance
Would scarcely cause one to suspect
The minor Circumstance

Assisting in the Bright Affair
So intricately done
Then offered as a Butterfly
To the Meridian—

To pack the Bud—oppose the Worm—
Obtain its right of Dew—
Adjust the Heat—elude the Wind—
Escape the prowling Bee

Great Nature not to disappoint
Awaiting Her that Day—
To be a Flower, is profound
Responsibility—

54

If I should die,
And you should live—
And time should gurgle on—
And morn should beam—
And noon should burn—
As it has usual done—
If Birds should build as early
And Bees as bustling go—
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
’Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with Daisies lie—
That Commerce will continue—
And Trades as briskly fly—
It makes the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene—
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!

1695

There is a solitude of space
A solitude of sea
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be
Compared with that profounder site
That polar privacy
A soul admitted to itself—
Finite infinity.

1680

Sometimes with the Heart
Seldom with the Soul
Scarcer once with the Might
Few—love at all.

i think i exist only to love
but never experience,
a pretentious bag of bones like me
will only stir your feelings
     —you will wallow in it for some time
     and then you will forget about me
like a cup of coffee that has gone cold.

but if i must admit,
it's because i do stunt my own growth:
in life, in love, but strangely enough,
                                           not in death.
an odd number of reasons
aid my tendencies;
they get glued together to form
a paper-maché of well-composed farewells
—a craft i have mastered in my years of longing.

i think i exist only to love,
but never experience—
yet here i am, still longing
until i get a hand to hold.